A bed time story for posterity: Part 1
January 12, 2009
I figured I’d record me reading a story to the kids… because… well you never know…
And I did sign the life insurance policy today.. 
BTW – an antimacassar is that little thing that always falls off the back of the lazy boy every time you sit on it.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimacassar
WordPress Quick Tip: Fixing the number of comments per post
January 7, 2009
For various reasons, sometimes the number of comments shown under the title of the post may not match the number of actual comments displayed under the post.
Here is a simple SQL statement that will resolve the issue:
update `wp_posts` set comment_count = (select count(*) from wp_comments
WHERE `comment_post_ID` = `ID` and comment_approved = '1')
You can use this to verify what would change and where your problems may lie:
SELECT ID, `post_title`, `comment_count`,
(select count(*) from `wp_comments`
WHERE (`comment_post_ID` = `ID`) and (`comment_approved` = '1')) as NewCC
FROM `wp_posts`
WHERE `comment_count` <> (select count(*) from `wp_comments`
WHERE (`comment_post_ID` = `ID`) and (`comment_approved` = '1'))
A Meme for Fun!
January 6, 2009
Copy, paste, and bold what you have done!
1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/Disneyworld
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Gone rollerskating
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Acted in a play or performed on stage
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted –
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Won money
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Had to put someone you love in Hospice Care
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day
Note: I played in a group recital in elementary school, but I’m not sure that counts as a band.
I may have climbed to the top of the Statue of Liberty but I’m pretty sure I turned around with Denise when it was too long of a climb.
I also was selected for a jury but was dismissed as I didn’t give the attorney the answers he wanted.
Neither a borrower nor a lender of bandwidth be
January 5, 2009
“Neither a borrower nor a lender of bandwidth be; And this above all, to thine own site be true…”
William Shakespeertopeer – The Renaissance Man’s Guide to the Internet. – Chapter 1 verse 12
Yet here, readers! aboard, aboard, for shame!
Google sits in the shoulder of your site, And you are stay’d for.
There; my blessing with thee! And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character set. Give thy tongue a name,
and no unproportioned content to his act.
For search engines shall look for UTF-8 and EN or DE
And provide translations thereof.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
For so shalt search engines stop, after discovering
Repetition of the evil seven.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy site with links, trackbacks and pings;
For it is by the number of links to your site, that you are judged.
And it is through external links that you will grow.
But do not dull thy blog with trolls and spammers
Of each new-commenter, unfledged comrade. Beware
Links to their sites, are being in their name,
Bear them to Akismet that others may not burden thee.
Give every man thy ear, and seek their voice;
Take each man’s censure, by reserving your words.
Make thy habit to leave ideas for the voice of readers,
For participation, will buy their loyalty;
Choose a theme optimized for SEO as well as appearance,
For the apparel of a site oft proclaims the man,
And they in Google, of the best rank and station,
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender of bandwidth be;
For loan of text oft weakens site rank,
And borrowed images dull load time,
Cease and desist will be their cry,
And DMCAs will be sent to thee.
This above all: to thine own site be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
—————————
Adhering to the GPL, here, you find the original:
LORD POLONIUS Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
A winter walk…
January 4, 2009
I thought I would share some pics from 3 hour hike the other day. I hope you enjoy
I’ll post some videos tomorrow when I return to civilization and have the bandwidth to upload them…
Simple web rules beginners & pros all break- Rule #1
January 3, 2009
Yes, this applies to you. I’ve even changed the title of this series because if I named it “7 simple HTML rules beginners & pros all break” some readers would say “HTML” that’s coding stuff. That doesn’t apply to me. But almost everybody who surfs the web writes HTML. They may not know it, but they do. If you have a blog, I can almost guarantee you written HTML AND you’ve broken one or more of these rules. If you are a professional blogger or coder, I’d wager that you still break one or more of these rules on a regular basis. So… enough build up…
Here we go:
Rule 1: Everything has a beginning and an ending
So, if you want to add a blank line to a post or comment, the code is pretty simple right? You add <BR> and you have a new line. Right? WRONG! You’ve just broken rule number one. ALL HTML TAGS MUST HAVE AN OPEN AND CLOSE. So to write this correctly you would say either <BR></BR> or use the short cut <BR />. That shortcut with a trailing / is the correctest way to add a break. It opens and closes the tag within itself. Another example of a common place this rule is broken is within the IMG tag. You will often see code like
<IMG SRC=”me.bmp” alt=”A picture of me”>
when it is more properly written as:
<IMG SRC=”me.bmp” alt=”A picture of me”/>
Why does this rule matter?
Perhaps the most visible side effect of this is seen on blogs that don’t have a sidebar or have all the text after a certain point bolded or centered. This is most frequently caused by an unclosed <DIV> tag. Each <DIV> is a division or an invisible box that is in a specific area of a web page. The center column of a website is a common example of a <DIV>. If you don’t have the write number of <DIV> and </DIV> your web page will tell the browser, “The center column starts here” and it is never told “Now it has ended”. So your sidebar can become part of your center column. The most common cause of this is copying and pasting text from another website into your post. You will catch all of the open <DIV>with your copy but often miss a close div or two and that confuses the heck out of the browser. This happens so often that I’ve made a short video about how to manage these things for the bloggers on the b5media network.
The other reason this matters is that most browsers have a “Site didn’t follow the rules” or “Compatiblity” mode which is turned on when there are errors on the page. When this mode is activated, the browser starts loading the page in the simplest way it can in order to guess at what you really meant. I’ve over simplified this and you can find out more by searching “Web Standards” in Google. Put briefly, if you want your page to appear as you intended, close all your tags.
Or Everthing that begins must eventually come to an
How to instantly watch a YouTube video in High Quality
January 2, 2009
You know how the “Watch in High Quality” link never shows up right away on YouTube?
Isn’t that annoying???? I thought it was. So I wrote this little bookmarklet to allow me to switch any video I’m on to HQ immediately.
If you want to use it, just drag this link on to your link bar (or add it to your favorites) and then click it when you want to switch any YouTube! video to High Quality:
Not Quite 52 books in 52 weeks..
January 2, 2009
I still think I may have met the challenge…
But I can’t prove it yet.
I’ve collected 36 of the books I read in the last year, but I am drawing a blank on there rest… I THINK I’ve read more than this this year and I probably met the goal but I am sure drawing a blank on them. Part of the problem is that reading The Song of Ice and Fire took a loooong time. They are good books but DANG the are complex. I’ve never read any other books that did so many point of views for so many different characters. But they were enjoyable. Also I tried to read a non-fiction history of the ivory coast twice, but I never made it through to the very end of that one.
Anyway… here’s the first 36. When I get access to my desktop computer again (I’m travelling atm), I will see if I can find more to ad to my list when I get back home.
Have YOU read any of these:
Armageddon’s children
Artemis Fowl (novel) (2001) Eoin Colfer
Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident (2002) Eoin Colfer
Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code (2003) Eoin Colfer
Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony (2006) Eoin Colfer
Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception (2005) Eoin Colfer
Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox (2008) Eoin Colfer
Dragon Harper Todd McCaffrey
Dragons of the Highlord Skies Margaret Weis
Ender in Exile Orson Scott Card
How to eat fried worms
I robot
Linkspell Cornelia Funke
Island of the Blue Dolphin
Magic Street Orson Scott Card
Mars Ben Bova
Metal Swarm
Phantom Terry Goodkind
S is for Silence Sue Grafton
Shadow of the Giant Orson Scott Card
Starwars Revenge of the Sith Stover, Matthew
The Elves of Cintra
The Friday night Knitting – Jacobs, Kate
The Gypsy Morph
A Game of Thrones (1996)
A Clash of Kings (1998)
A Storm of Swords (2000)
A Feast for Crows (2005)
I Am Legend and Other Stories
Dune Frank Herbert
Foundation Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Earth Isaac Asimov
Foundation’s Edge Isaac Asimov
The Light of Other Days Arthur C. Clarke