Super Ginormous

Category: Personal

Posts of a more personal nature.

  • Why I won’t be getting an iPhone

    Sorry for the light posting as of late. I’ve been swamped at work, and trying to spend less time online at home. That, and I didn’t really have anything to post about…

    Anyway.

    My wife asked me last night why I didn’t want an iPhone. And as soon as I came in this morning, coworkers were asking to see mine. (I had to inform them, that they aren’t available until 6pm tonight…) I’m not going to get an iPhone… not now anyways. It’s a beautiful piece of hardware, and I’d love to have one at some point, but for now, I’ll pass. There’s a couple of reasons for this:

    1. It’s a first generation product, that’s bound to have some issues. Don’t get me wrong. Apple makes some sweet products, but their first gen stuff has issues from time to time.
    2. PowerServe, the company I work for, takes care of my cellphone for me.
    3. The largest capacity iPhone isn’t big enough. If and when I were to get an iPhone, I want one that’s going to easily replace my 80Gb iPod that’s nearly filled to the brim with movies, tv shows and music. 8Gb just doesn’t cut it.

    At some point, I might be in the market for one, but for now I’m saving up to get a Digital SLR, such as the Nikon D40 or Canon Digital Rebel XT.

  • Nectar of the gods

    jolt_cx2.jpgAh, caffeine, how do I love thee? Jolt Cola’s held a special place in my heart for a number of years. I used to get them at a store called “Sportsman’s Corner” in Edgefield, SC, but they stopped carrying them. Jolt was nowhere to be found in this area… Flash forward to this past weekend while in Sevierville, TN, when lo and behold… I discovered Jolt Cola in a Walgreen’s. Not content with only being able to enjoy this tasty (and energizing) beverage away from home, I immediately checked a local Walgreen’s once I got back to see if they carried Jolt Cola. Sure enough: they did.

    The downside is the suckers run $2.99 a pop. That’s quite a bit more than one would spend on a typical energy drink. Fortunately for me (and you, if you’re interested), ThinkGeek sells Jolt Cola by the case for a mere $2.08 per can.

    So far I’ve tried the new Jolt Cola and Jolt Blue and enjoyed them both. One of my coworkers had the Jolt Ultra, a carb-free, sugar-free, lemon-tasting beverage and said it was pretty good… There are a few other flavors I would like to try, but I’ll stick to the regular Jolt Cola for now.

    It’s nice to be able to find these now… even though I probably ought to cut back on my caffeine intake. Which reminds me… I’m still up, and it’s just shy of midnight… Thanks, Jolt…

  • The Facebook Platform

    FacebookThe Facebook Platform is going to revolutionize social networks. Where MySpace is tightening restrictions on users and the applications they can use, Facebook is opening themselves up for use with all sorts of applications. This can’t be good news for any of the social networks that are similar to the MySpace model, and yeah I’m talking ’bout Virb as well.

    Your Facebook profile is now a hub for all of your online data. With Applications, you can pull in your latest diggs, bookmarks, and much, much more. In fact, I believe they’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the capabilities of Facebook Applications. It’s only going to be a matter of time before users start doing everything through the site. (That in and of itself is a scary thought.) For Facebook, it’s definitely a win. The more people that see and use the site, the more revenue they make off of advertising and user data… For application builders, it’s a win as well…

    Are you on Facebook? Let’s network.

  • Intermittent

    The site’s been really wonky today due to some problems on the Grid at MediaTemple. I hope they get the issues worked out soon. This is third time the site’s gone offline in a week. It’s starting to get ridiculous.

    UPDATE: According to MediaTemple, the interruption was widespread and affected all of its Grid customers. They’re saying that the culprit was a DDoS attack on the system…

    Network interruption resolved

    Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 2:13 pm

    This afternoon (mt) Media Temple engineers successfully mitigated a fairly sophisticated network attack aimed at several of our services. This distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack appears to have originated from China and other sources along the western Pacific rim.

    We have upgraded our load balancing system and made various other network configuration changes to prevent disruptions like this in the future. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and thank you for your patience.

  • Separating Trackbacks/Pings from Comments in WordPress

    I was trying to figure out the best way to separate trackbacks/pings from the comments here on the site. I’ve seen a number of tutorials out there, but none seemed to do exactly what I wanted. The code is piece-mealed from a couple of places, but this is how I accomplished it here on the site:

    Backup your existing comments.php file associated with your theme! I cannot stress this enough.

    Assuming you’re using the default theme, or some variation thereof, you’re going to want to look for this in your comments.php file:

    [php]

    < ?php if ($comments) : ?>
    [/php]

    You’re basically going to replace the logic on comments.php from where it says < ?php if ($comments) : ?> (Line 20) to < ?php endif; ?> (Line 61) with the logic below.

    Define the number of pings and comments (Source: Sandbox theme):

    [php]
    < ?php /* NUMBERS OF PINGS AND COMMENTS */ $ping_count = $comment_count = 0; foreach ( $comments as $comment ) get_comment_type() == "comment" ? ++$comment_count : ++$ping_count; ?>
    [/php]

    Then check to see whether comment_status is set to 'open'. If it is 'open', we then check to make sure the comment_count isn’t equal to zero. Once these conditions are met, I then display only the comments. Some other conditional logic is included, like checking whether the comment’s being held for moderation:

    [php]
    < ?php if ('open' == $post-> comment_status) : ?>
    < ?php if ( $comment_count ) : ?>
    < ?php if ($comments) : ?>

    Stuff said in regard to this entry:

      < ?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
      < ?php if (get_comment_type() == "comment"){ ?>

    1. ” alt=”” />

    < ?php comment_author_link() ?> < ?php _e('said'); ?>:

    < ?php comment_text() ?>

    < ?php if ($comment->comment_approved == ‘0’) : ?>

    Your comment is awaiting moderation.

    < ?php endif; ?>

    Posted < ?php comment_date('F j, Y') ?> @
    ‘, ”); ?>

    • < ?php /* Changes every other comment to a different class */ if ('alt' == $oddcomment) $oddcomment = ''; else $oddcomment = 'alt'; ?>
    < ?php } ?>
    < ?php endforeach; /* end for each comment */ ?>

    < ?php else : ?>
    < ?php endif ?>

    < ?php else : ?>

    Hey, there’s no comments on this post!

    How about being the first?

    < ?php endif /* if ( $comment_count ) */ ?>

    < ?php else : // comments are closed ?>

    < ?php /* Comments are closed */ ?>

    Sorry dude, comments are closed on this post. If you had stuff you liked to say about this entry,
    feel free to contact me.

    < ?php endif; /* if ('open' == $post-> comment_status) */ ?>
    [/php]

    Then we do the same thing for trackback/pings:

    [php]
    < ?php if ( pings_open() ) : ?>
    < ?php if ( $ping_count ) : ?>

    Trackback/Ping Stuff:

      < ?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
      < ?php if (get_comment_type() != "comment") : ?>

    1. < ?php comment_date('F jS, Y') ?> at < ?php comment_time() ?> < ?php edit_comment_link('e',' ‘, ‘‘); ?>

      2. < ?php /* Changes every other comment to a different class */ if ('alt' == $oddcomment) $oddcomment = ''; else $oddcomment = 'alt'; ?>
      < ?php endif; ?>
      < ?php endforeach; /* end for each comment */ ?>

    < ?php else : /* if ( $ping_count ) */ ?>

    < ?php endif /* if ( $ping_count ) */ ?>

    < ?php else : // pings are a no-go bro. ?>

    < ?php /* Pings are a no-go, bro. */ ?>

    Pings are a no-go, bro.

    Maybe next time?

    < ?php endif /* if ( pings_open() ) */ ?>
    [/php]

    Save the changes and you should be good to go.

    Hopefully this is a pretty straightforward implementation… If you have any better ideas, I’d love to hear ’em.

  • A Mini-Design Update

    You may or may not have noticed, but I rolled out a few design changes shortly after I upgraded to WordPress 2.2 yesterday morning.

    • I changed the color scheme a bit. Went from a dark blue background with white text to a white background with black text. It’s not a major change, but I’m hoping it’ll help with readability. More significant changes will probably be coming in the next week or so. (I’m still trying to wrap up a few projects I’ve been working on for a while, so depending on how quickly those are finished will determine how soon I get to play again with the site design.)
    • I reworked how Comments and Pings/Trackbacks are displayed on individual post items. Previously, trackbacks were displayed inline with regular comments. Now, they’re not. They used to be included in <div>s, now they’re in an <ol>. (These are subtle changes, I know, but I’m trying to improve the semantics in the markup for the site.)

    The way I’m versioning the site is sort of weird – and pretty arbitrary – to be honest with you. I’m calling this Version 14.1.0 because of some improvements I made in the code structure for my site template and some CSS changes that I made. But the reality is, I have no idea what version the site is at currently. Hopefully I can do a better job at explaining some more of the changes I make in the near future.

    (Thanks, Matt, for the nudge to do this.)

  • Up and Running Again

    Wow. I started the process around 7:30pm or so and I am just now finishing up at 4:15am. Insane.

    The good news is, though, that I now have a fresh install of Windows XP SP2 with CS3 Web Premium up and running without any problems. Was it worth staying up this late? I doubt it…. but it’s done now. I’m just glad it’s working.

  • Wish Me Luck

    I screwed up my laptop earlier this week while trying to install CS3 Web Premium. I tweaked some Registry settings on my laptop without doing a backup, and guess what? I screwed it up. I thought I’d have Windows Restore to fall back on, but alas, that is not the case.

    It’s not completely screwed… but I’ve got to back up all of my data before I go through the process of reinstalling Windows XP, getting software reinstalled, etc.

    Wish me luck. Hopefully I’ll be back up and running at home before midnight tonight.

  • Brief Hiatus

    Posting will be light through next week. I’ve got a number of things I’m trying to wrap up and this site can definitely be a distraction sometimes. I’ll return to my normal posting schedule soon!

  • Effercio 14.0.5

    Pushed a few minor updates live this morning:

    • Created a Links page that uses WordPress’ blogroll/links list functionality to handle the content. Now displays Friends, Other Stuff and Social Networks. You can view my last 10 Ma.gnolia bookmarks here as well.
    • Updated Archives page for better display.