Best Thanksgiving List Ever

I’m not going to even begin to bore anyone with the old cliche’d things I’m thankful for. Family, health, friends, etc.–anyone can think of those. Besides, I wrote a nice Thanksgiving post last year. Nope, I’m going to get real. I’m thankful for a lot of things most people probably aren’t, so why not list those and make my Thanksgiving post a little different? Ok then, I will.

  • Nice ladies with coffee–I like nice ladies, and I like coffee, but when you put the two together you get magic!  Nice ladies with coffee just give it away sometimes (I’m still talking about coffee). Other times, they will break the rule that says “you can’t get $.59 refills in styrofoam cups” and let you do it anyway. This is especially helpful if you are driving to the ATL and are stopping for your 2nd or 3rd cup of the day.
  • Muscle memory–It’s frustrating to get older and not be able to the things you used to do as well or as fast as you could when you were younger. On the other hand, it’s nice to still be able to do them period.
  • La Gallina Turuleca and ZoboomafooLa Gallina Turuleca has been viewed 11.5 million times. I think I’m responsible for about 9 million of those.  It stops the screaming.  Zoboomafoo, while popular with the kid is actually a pretty decent show.  I was just saying last night while flipping through channels that Zoboomafoo is better than most of the other stuff on TV.  Which brings me to…
  • Rock of Love Charm School–I’m thankful for this show because it makes me thankful for so many other things. First, it makes me thankful for Rock of Love, without which this show would not be possible. Secondly, it makes me thankful for every ex-girlfriend ever. Yeah, even “that one” wasn’t anything like these chicks. And all those ex-girlfiends make me thankful for my current girlfriend. Sure, technically we’re married, but since we still like each other so much it’s more like dating, which I’m very thankful for.
  • WordPress–Not just WordPress (which is free), but all the free WordPress plugins and WordPress themes as well. What a great, easily extendible platform! I’m thankful more people are catching on to how flexible and easy it is for people to get things done on the web with WordPress. The more people are empowered, the easier it is for them to get information out, and we all win.
  • Free speech–I’m really greatful that we’re able to sit behind our keyboards and cry “Socialism!” when we see it closing in on us. I’m really not sure why we’re still allowed to do so. It’s probably because big government isn’t efficient enough to stop us yet–they’ll have to spend a few years doing a study, creating a department, hiring a huge staff, and creating some regulation first. Oh, and taxing the shit out of us to pay for it all. Of course, it’s entirely possible that they really don’t know that all this stuff they’re doing is socialism. I never considered that possibility until this week.
  • Space…Fight!–This is quite possibly the greatest Facebook app ever produced. It’s a game that has no apparent purpose and cannot be won. What’s the point? I believe the point is to see how long you can stand to play this game. Can you stand to play it longer than your friends? Out of spite, I believe I can. However, I’m getting some stiff competition from one Space…Fight!er who just won’t give up.
  • “Change”–This word has given me so many opportunities to laugh this year, and the hits just keep on coming.  Only in America can more of the same be marketed as change and be bought by so many. It reminds me of Mick Foley rasslin as Cactus Jack, Dude Love, and Mankind. He wore different costumes as each character, but once the bell rung you just had a crazy sumbitch dishing out pain, no matter the gettup. That’s change I can believe in.
Have a great, safe, and happy Thanksgiving!

WordPress 2.6 Nice

WordPress 2.6 has been released, and there are some really nice features in this version.  The biggest new feature to me is the revision history, which allows you to compare every revision of a post and also gives you the option to revert back to previous versions.   Other really cool features are a live word count, ability to reorder images in a gallery you’ve uploaded, captions for images, and a “Press This” button for your browser that let’s you post right out of an article you’re reading.  Does that mean I have no excuse for the light blogging I’ve been doing lately?  Now I have to pop in a post from EVERYTHING I find interesting?  We shall see.

On the admin side, plugin management has been changed to make things much easier (multiple activation is now enabled) and theme preview is now available without installing a plugin.  I’m sure I’ll write a post later complaining about all of the things that are broken, but I’m pretty happy with this update so far.  These features make WordPress even better for use as a full fledged CMS.

Found–Another Good WordPress Resource

I’ve been spending the last few days working on a couple of new projects that I plan on launching later this week or early next week. On Monday I put my first WordPress plugin out for the world to, uh, bash. Just kidding (not really).

I’ve been lucky enough to find a few people who are willing to run it through the wringer and show me the problems and what can be improved. The unexpected bonus is that these guys have great resources on their own websites, and I may not have discovered them otherwise. For example, I was checking out Leland’s site, themelab.com, and ran across a really good article on improving on existing WordPress themes which instantly solved a problem I’ve been having on one of my new projects.

It’s really encouraging to find people who are willing to help out and make these projects go more smoothly, and it’s really cool when you find a resource like themelab.com that you can refer to again and again down the road!

WordPress 2.5 Upgrade (Official)

WordPress 2.5 was released yesterday, and I’ve installed it on all most some of my sites. So far, my favorite new feature is the automatic upgrade of plugins. But…

The reason I need automatic upgrade of plugins is because I’m so bad at keeping my plugins updated. As a result, I didn’t have the newest version of the WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin (for the whole WordPress engine) installed, and that caused a problem with the WordPress Plugin Upgrade feature. The problem looks like this:

Cannot redeclare class pclzip

To avoid this problem, follow these three easy steps for upgrading your blog and your plugins:

  1. Make sure you install the auto-upgrade plugin (version 1.0, at least)
  2. Use that plugin to automatically upgrade you to WordPress version 2.5 (there is an “automatic” feature)
  3. Then you can begin to automatically upgrade your individual plugins.

There are database upgrades with version 2.5, so make sure when you do the auto-upgrade in step 2 that you do the database upgrade, and make sure you reactivate your plugins–deactivation of the plugins is part of the auto-upgrade.

As I said in my review of the release candidate, the tags editor is really nice too, as well as the overall improved layout of the dashboard.

Spring Cleaning My Blog

I made a promise a couple of weeks ago that I’d be making some changes here. For better or worse, I set out to do just that last night. I committed to working through Earth Hour at least, and ended up going to bed early this morning.

In lieu of turning out the lights for an hour last night, I decided to try to conserve energy in a different way. I set out to make my beloved readers have an easier time with my site by changing the theme and upgrading to WordPress 2.5 (post coming on that alone) to make things easier for myself. I think I’ve reduced my bandwidth footprint as well–eliminating a crap ton of useless images and junk.

Spring cleaning for my blog.

Here’s what I was able to do in a few hours: elimination of large header image, elimination of background images that I think caused issues on some browsers, and elimination of post separator images. These should not only improve load times, but also make things a little better visually.

Other visual changes were to increase the width and text size of the main content area, addition of a tag cloud, and enlarging and moving the subscription button to the header. Hopefully this will boost readership too, which is a bonus for me.

If I could just find a way to keep Hillary’s mug off of my site through the adsense in the sidebar without blocking all Newsmax ads, things would be much improved visually.

Let me know if you’re having any problems loading the site. I’m sure hubonst will have something to say about it.

Hillary Clinton and the Economy

I can’t believe she said this:

“It’s time for a president who is ready on day one to be the commander in chief of our economy,” the New York senator said, reframing her leadership campaign theme. “Sometimes the phone rings at 3 a.m. in the White House, and it’s an economic crisis.”

So what is the solution at 3 am? Do you get on the phone to the Chairman of the Fed and beg him to drop interest rates 0.75%? Do you decide to take away buy people’s property and pay other people to flood it? Do you log into your online account and borrow millions billions trillions from China to write out checks to the American people that are just big enough to allow them to buy some stuff from…China?

Do you then go back to sleep after one of these snap decisions, resting easy that the situation has been resolved?

To be fair, it’s not just Clinton, and the American people are encouraging them to stick their noses where they don’t belong. I can’t remember where I read this (thanks to public education), but it describes the powers and duties of the President of the United States pretty clearly.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

Where does it say the President is in charge of the economy or even has anything to do with the economy? And seriously, do we want one person to have that kind of power? Wasn’t that exact situation a major factor in that war fought a couple hundred years ago?

Firefox 2.0.0.13 and WordPress

Is anyone else having an issue viewing their WordPress dashboard in Firefox 2.0.0.13? My blogs themselves look ok, but the dashboard is wack. No? Just me?

That may be the last time I take a brand new upgrade.

***UPDATE***

“Wack”= CSS doesn’t seem to be working at all, but only on the WP Dashboard

If You’re Thinking of Upgrading WordPress

I’ve already received a few emails about this upgrade and keeping WordPress up to date.  First off, the one I posted about last night is a release candidate.  I wouldn’t recommend upgrading until the new version is actually released.  Example, I’m not running it on this blog yet, only on a development blog.

When you do decide to upgrade, I recommend Keith Dsouza‘s Automatic Upgrade plugin.  It handles all the steps required for a manual upgrade for you.  Make sure you make a donation to his cause…this plugin will save you a lot of time and hassle.  It even downloads the newest version of WP for you and prompts you when upgrades are available.

I do recommend doing a manual upgrade at least one time in your life.  First of all, it will help you appreciate the automatic plugin.  Secondly, you’ll be able to handle any odd issues that arise later on if you’ve been through the process.  To upgrade manually, there are a few basic steps.  WordPress has published a full article on upgrading, but here are the high points:

1.  Back up all of your files

2.  Back up your database (there’s a plugin for that too)

3.  Download the version of WP you want to install

4.  Disable your plugins

5.  The only potentially tricky part.  FTP the files for the new version to your server…DO NOT upload the wp-content directory and overwrite the one that you already have.  It contains your theme, plugins, and images.  If you overwrite it they’ll all be gone…good thing you backed them up, right?  Only overwrite the contents of the wp-content folder–not the actual folders within it.  In most cases, this is an index.php file that does nothing, and you won’t be in any trouble if you avoid the wp-content folder altogether.   You also don’t want to overwrite your wp-config.php file either.  This shouldn’t be a problem because there usually isn’t one that ships with the new version, but double check.

6.  Go to www.yoursite.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php.  I’m assuming here that your blog is located in your root directory.  If it isn’t, just adjust the URL.  For example, if your blog is in the /blog directory you’d point your browser to  www.yoursite.com/blog/wp-admin/upgrade.php

7.  This will handle all of the upgrades and prompt you if there is a database upgrade (there is for 2.5).  It’s a very simple process and tells you when you’re finished.

8.  Reactivate your plugins

9.  You’re done!

Using WordPress 2.5 RC1

As promised, I got WP 2.5 RC1 installed on a development blog tonight and have spent a little time clicking through it.  I’ll say this much already for the Dashboard…it is much better organized for authors/editors/administrators.  The big tabs on the left are for “Write”, “Manage”, “Design” (formerly “Presentation”), and “Comments”.  Anything else you’d want to do is still there–“Settings”, “Plugins”, “Users”, but located off to the right side.  There are two BIG and OBVIOUS buttons for “Write a New Page” and “Write a New Post”, presumably the two things most users want to do the most.

As far as new features go, the big one that jumped out at me immediately is the ability to add more than one photo at a time.  Same goes for other media like video and audio.  Also you don’t have to scroll down on a laptop to Publish anymore.   “Publish Status” has been moved to the top right of the posting area.  Kinda of nice, since you have to do this every time you post, huh?

I’d like the ability to change the order of the components/widgets/whatchamacallits on the posting page to reorganize them if I’d like.  I have some fields that are added with plugins that I use quite often, while others that ship with WordPress I hardly use at all.  The ability to resize the posting area is nice as well.

Speaking of plugins, I haven’t seen any issues yet.  The (manual) upgrade went fine as well.  As far as nuts and bolts go, 2.5 gives you the ability to manage tags just like you manage categories, links, posts, and pages.  But I’d have to say that my favorite new feature or enhancement is in the theme management section.  The editor is larger, and the theme pages are listed along with the appropriate .php file names.  Same goes for the plugin editor.

Overall, I’m pretty happy.  Haven’t done any comparisons with the actual database yet.  Too tired and will pick at it tomorrow.

WordPress 2.5 Release Candidate

I am very crunched for time today, but tonight I’ll be installing the WordPress 2.5 release candidate on one of my development blogs and give a full report here–probably posted sometime very early Wednesday morning.

WordPress new interface

From the looks of it, the “Write” section of the dashboard is going to be much improved, which is an area I think WP needed to catch up.  Another great new feature will be a customizable dashboard.  Both of these features should work out great for me, as one of my projects in the works is going to have scores of contributers.  I want to be able to limit the functionality for experienced users and also make it as easy as possible for newer users to contribute using WordPress.