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Status bars stuck at 57%!!!

Jason Thibeault2 Comments

I’m going to try for a two-fer tonight, but I’m going to split the posts up, not only because they’re disparate topics, but also because I’m not 100% certain I’ll finish the second right away.  If not, oh well, I only have three or four regular readers still.  I think I’m putting in a phenomenal amount of effort given the size of my audience, and given that I’ve done nothing thus far to actually grow that audience beyond my “base”, that being people I actually know in real life.  Sure, the search engines are linking me a lot, and I link to other blogs frequently which generates pingbacks, but I’m small-time, a very specialized blog.  I don’t even do much actual Canada material, which is something I’ve been meaning to amend as soon as possible.  Either way, once I get a bit more audience, I’ll probably throw on a Google Ads block on the left column, which you can dutifully ignore.

The house situation is cruising along, but it still doesn’t feel real.  Jodi’s extremely frazzled by the lack of specificity with regard to the timetable of the final few pieces of the puzzle — the final inspection, the trading of money for papers, the keys — and I can’t blame her, but I’d prefer to just take the last two weeks as they come.  I have a U-Haul booked, phone and internet due to be hooked up along with power, all on the 18th, the closing date.  I go get the U-Haul at 7am, pack the truck as soon as humanly possible (with what looks like possibly just myself, ReformedYankee and Jodi at the moment, unless by some miracle anyone else manages to free themselves from their pre-existing appointments), get to the new place in time to meet with the power / internet / phone folks (noon-6), get some food into us all, and get the U-Haul back to the service station I rented it from.  Should be a slice of pie.

Especially since we have one less big appliance to deal with — I sold the dishwasher that I had, just last year, rescued for free from an ignominious death at a curbside during spring cleanup, repaired (replaced the power cord and added a seal that turned out to be unnecessary), having sold it for a decent $30.  I not only got a dishwasher out of it for a year, but I made $15 after the repair supplies.  Not a bad profit margin.

We’ve been packing Jodi’s mother’s things, though she can only move into her new apartment on the 13th, as that’s the soonest power can be hooked up.  Unfortunately we live near a university town, and that means near the start of school, the utilities get swamped with hookups.  We’ve already moved a bunch there, though, and are slowly dragging stuff (like dishes) up out of storage as we bring her stuff to the apartment.

Otherwise, life is going swimmingly.

Status bars stuck at 57%!!!
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WordPress 2.6 is cool.

Jason Thibeault1 Comment

And by cool I mean totally sweet.

WordPress 2.6 is now installed, and has some neat features, such as revision control for posts, theme preview, word counts, management interface improvements, integration with Google Gears if you have it installed (and if you’re any kind of geek, you’ll go install it now), and all sorts of other stuff that you’ll probably never get to see unless you decide to open your own WordPress based blog.

Which you should consider doing.  So I can link you.

WordPress 2.6 is cool.

Gravatars

Jason Thibeault

I’m in the process of getting “globally recognized avatars” set up, a service provided by Gravatar (the same folks that created WordPress and the Akismet plugin).  This way, if you register for this blog using an e-mail address that is registered with Gravatar, a picture of your choosing will show up next to your name in your comments.  A number of other blogs use this service already, so you may already have an account.  If not, go ahead, sign up and upload a picture — far as I can tell, this service is totally safe.  I’m sure it’ll start working in the comments shortly, as soon as I figure out why it’s showing everyone as anonymous, myself included, presently.

Update: Working now.  Had to modify the theme I’m using to use the proper image links.  So go sign up for a Gravatar of your own.  I added a permanent example of it to my About box on the left, as well.  I really like the idea of being able to change your profile picture across dozens of sites at the same time.  I also managed to get a gallery-like WordPress plugin going, so as soon as I sort through some pictures I’ll post them up here.

Gravatars

Free for all

Jason Thibeault3 Comments

Okay, so I’ve decided to open up comments to everyone, registered or not, and test out this akismet plugin.  If you want to prove you are who you say you are, registering is the best way to do so.  If you don’t care that someone could fake your name, then feel free to post your drive-by-postings.  Akismet should be able to take out the spammers so I feel fairly safe doing this.  Have fun!

Free for all

PHP safe mode shenanigans

Jason Thibeault

I’m on my lunch break, and I’m a bit annoyed right now.  This morning I tried to install the pre-packaged Gallery installer that’s available in my website’s Plesk, and last week I tried to manually install Gallery2, both without success.  Apparently PHP Safe Mode is enabled on my server, meaning I can’t install either, since they were programmed to be able to allow an admin to directly upload pictures and thus the administrator has to be able to mess with the server’s directory structure.

The reason I’m annoyed is, PHP Safe Mode is basically just a way of protecting poorly configured servers from “black hats”.  If the server is configured with a chroot environment (as in, the user of the web site has his own “root” filestructure — and therefore can’t break out of it to mess with other peoples’ sites), then PHP Safe Mode is utterly useless; all it does is serve to break applications and frustrate PHP programmers.  Honestly, the fact that PHP Safe Mode exists at all is kind of silly (even the developers of PHP say so!), considering that anything you can do in PHP, you can also do in CGI, and there’s no such thing as a CGI safe mode.  The only reason I’m upset about this, and not simply switching to CGI, is that CGI is a vastly older web programming protocol, and while useful now and then (especially to black hats!), it is not the programming language of choice for today’s programmer.  No, that honor goes to ASP, the demon-spawn of Microsoft.  It’s only us open source geeks who prefer PHP.

I can see that Safe Mode is turned off for the Unix Pro packages on this server.  I don’t know if it’s really worth paying more a month just so that I can put up a pretty picture gallery.  I guess I might confront the web service about this, and see what they have to say.  Maybe it’s just turned on by default on these cheaper packages, but can be turned off if you ask.  Or maybe they really are holding me hostage, so to speak, to get more money for the “full featured” PHP.

But I’m not going to call them today.  Today, I’m a bit busy at work, and I intend to get in touch with a mortgage broker during my spare time this afternoon… if I even get any.

PHP safe mode shenanigans

Favicons and new features

Jason Thibeault

I made a favicon for the site (up in the address bar — the little blue leaf, like the site logo).  However, for some godforsaken reason, it isn’t working properly for the RSS feed.  I’ll figure it out eventually.  Apologies, to the two of you who have subscribed via RSS.

I’m looking at integrating Gallery2 into this site, given that there are plugins to attach WordPress to Gallery2, and I have a ton of pictures to upload.  Hope I don’t hit my bandwidth limitations, which is likely once my family gets a hold of this page and starts browsing all the pictures all at once.

Favicons and new features

My first blog post.

Jason Thibeault,

So, here I am, joining the great unwashed and adding my voice to the choir of basement-dwelling bloggers who still live with their parents.  I might not technically live with my parents, but I guess I’m living with my girlfriend’s mother, even if the arrangement is more like “she’s living with us”.  I do dwell in the basement quite a bit though — that’s where we’ve set up our entertainment centre, excercise room and office area.  My part of the office area is where I play computer games.  My actual office work gets done on my work laptop, which is usually wherever I happen to be, oftentimes in the living room which is not actually in the basement.

All that aside, I haven’t really given much thought to what I want to blog about.  I guess this site will start to come into focus the more I write.  Obviously, I’m going to end up touching on my interests, which include computers and networking (where I make my living), video games (my biggest source of entertainment), and life in general (where the balance of my time ends up between work, gaming and unconsciousness).  I might talk about my relationship with Jodi, though I’ll try to keep it from getting too saccharine or personal.  I might put up recipes, because I enjoy cooking, even if I don’t practice as much as I used to.  I might post pictures for my friends and family to peruse.  I might talk politics, though honestly I know more about the state of US politics moreso than I know about Canadian politics — remember, I’m a particularly lousy Canadian, as the site title implies.  Anyway, it’ll all come in time, I guess.

This is my third or fourth attempt at a blog, in all honesty.  The other ones were self-hosted, with dynamic name servers, so this is my first one where I have my own domain name and an actual hosting company providing the web hosting.  This hosting company, webserve.ca, has a referrer program, which I might join to try to defray the costs of hosting, and if it comes to it, I might even put up some Google ads if it becomes too expensive (read: popular).  At the moment, though, this is just a vanity project, and I’m hoping it’ll allow me to blow off a bit of steam between all of my other obligations.

In the meantime, enjoy your stay.  Feel free to sign up for an account so you can comment on my posts.  Bear in mind, though, that I have to approve any subscribers’ authorization requests.  If I don’t get to your authorization in a timely fashion, feel free to contact me by e-mail — the link should be in the righthand bar.

My first blog post.