Pseudogeek stuff | MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Archive for the 'Pseudogeek stuff' Category

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Gravatar fun

Here there, John here again. My login still works here (clerical error, I’m sure), and I may have — completely accidentally — maybe, kinda, sorta…destroyed all Gravatar support.

Or, maybe just the McCain one.

Somebody who still actually works here should totally look into that.

Wordpress theme design contest

Quick bleg: Go here and vote for Nicki’s Wordpress theme, “Translucent Dream.” I’ve used her themes before and I can personally vouch for her l33t coding skillz–in fact, when I first started digging into WP themes, I learned a lot of what I know by studying some of her free themes! Besides, it’s purty. :D

Please please go vote - Translucent Dream! No registration required, just click over and vote!

Digg sucks.

Remember when Digg used to be for tech news? Yeah, me too.

Obviously, obviously, I’m at least as interested in politics as anything, but I did like Digg for tech news. There’s still stuff to be found there if you have time to really look for it, but if you’re like me–also interested in politics–going there is simply not worth the waves of nausea most of the time. And now, the tech stuff is lame most of the time, because you have people who aren’t tech geeks digging up lame stories.

Look at this garbage. And this. It’s a full-blown cult echo chamber, even worse than when the crazy Paulbots ruled the roost.

Revised guaranteed front pager at Digg:
HILLARY & MCSAME HACK OBAMA’S MACBOOK WITH LINUX-BASED SPYWARE FROM PIRATEBAY!!! Save the world, vote Obama ‘08! God Bless Amerikkka for Barack Obama!

And of course, the troofers and anti-Semites (usually the same people) still run rampant over there. I wonder…why do I ever go there? Most of the time I’m there just burying stuff, hoping the trash won’t get to the front page. Digg sucks.

Wordpress 2.5 question

Have any of you who use Wordpress done the upgrade to 2.5 yet and encountered problems?

I upgraded my test database when it first came out, and a bunch of plugins weren’t ready. Have any of y’all upgraded more recently without plugin problems? What about the file uploader?

(Linking to McCain Blogs to see if I can drag in some answers from the trackback people.)

Computer hell (again)

BAH. I lost another hard drive, this time on my PC, which I don’t really use any more except for the fact that I have a ton of stuff stored on it that I occasionally access via Bluetooth. Dammit.

If I disappear for a few days, it’ll be because I’m thinking of breaking out the Linux live CD to boot to see if it’s just Windoze messing up. :sigh: (Thank you, Lance, for the Linux CD–I might actually use it, finally!)

Oh well, it’s not like I’m doing any blogging lately. I told you, no teevee in this room = lack of blogging motivation. (Maybe that’s a good thing?)

Today’s Blog Tip: Compress Your Blogrolls!

Not that anyone asked, but too bad.

Dear Blogger,

When you have a whole bunch of blogrolls or reeeeally long blogrolls–no, I’m not going to rag on you about having a bunch of blogrolls, as I have that particular stupid affliction myself–PLEASE, for the love of all that is holy, PLEASE compress them so your blogrolls don’t scroll five miles past the oldest post on your page. Constructive criticism: It looks like shite. Really.

Here’s an easy fix that requires no more technical expertise than sticking that Blogrolling script in the sidebar does. You can change the width/height if you wish; this is just a basic example that works to create a scroll box:

<div style="overflow:auto; padding: 4px; width: 160px; height: 220px;">
(your blogrolling script)
</div>

That’s it.

Here it is in action, using one of my blogrolls:

Cotillion

See how the lines wrapped, too? That’s where adjusting the width will help.

<div style="font-size: 10px; overflow:auto; padding: 4px; width: 200px; height: 220px;">
(blogrolling script)
</div>

Cotillion

Alternatively, you could set the font-size to be smaller. Like this:

<div style="font-size: 10px; overflow:auto; padding: 4px; width: 160px; height: 220px;">
(blogrolling script)
</div>

Cotillion

Right, so you noticed I don’t use this on my own blog. I use this. There are other methods for drop-down menus, of course; look around here just to start.

By the way, all those buttons in your sidebar? You can “hide” those too, if you want. Just stick the code in there instead of a blogrolling script.

And yes, Google and the TTLB Ecosystem and all that will still “see” the links just as if you hadn’t done any of this at all.

Internet Flashback

This is pretty cool–wanna see what the internet looked like in the mid-90’s (eons ago, in internet time)? God, it sucked back then. Imagine how much better it will/should be ten years from now.

Lately, I’ve started collecting old VHS tapes about the Internet from the early- to mid-1990s. While most of these are pretty corny — think Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing — they also inadvertently captured pieces of the web that don’t exist anywhere else. The Internet Archive’s earliest snapshots were in late 1996, so anything before that is extremely sparse. The videos, silly as they are, still represent valuable documentation of the early web.

I spent most of the day yesterday working on a workflow to digitize VHS tapes, settling on VCR to MiniDV camera my Macbook Pro with Firewire. These tapes are pretty worn, so the quality’s not great, but that almost adds to their charm.

Here’s the result: the first volume of a two-tape collection called “Internet Power!” from 1995. I’ve included some select quotes and screenshots below.

This is just the video, but you need to go read the quotes and links, too.

Help for DNS configuration problem (name servers) with Blogs-About Hosting

This isn’t going to matter to most of you regulars here, if any, but I’m posting this for others using Blogs-About Hosting for their blogs/websites. (Everyone else: sorry for the interruption of regularly scheduled moron-blogging.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Billy Gates!

“A tale about a man, a laptop, and a roof.” HAHAHAHA

Ping/trackback problems with Wordpress 2.3?

HALP!

I was trying to figure out why the Anchoress wasn’t getting internal pings since I upgraded her to the latest Wordpress release, and I also tried sending her pings/trackbacks from my testing blog (also on WP2.3). Then I started to think (uh oh!)…I haven’t seen any pings or trackbacks here lately, either. I just thought it was because my blog sucks, but now I’m wondering if it’s also because they aren’t working properly…?

Is anyone aware of a problem? Google is not my friend in this case–I haven’t found anyone mentioning it yet. I’m stumped.

Will someone please try to send me a ping/trackback–especially if you’re using WP 2.3?

[Testing a trackback to this post at the Anchoress.]

Political Endorsements for Geeks

This is my favorite candidate endorsement post ever. I’m not going to excerpt it, because it won’t make sense in excerpts. Just go read it.

Related, in plain English.

New tool for live-blogging: Coveritlive

Check this out:

stein hoist Conservative Belle

Wordpress upgrade…again

Stand by for a few, please–Wordpress has put out (yet) another new release. Things will be crappy for a few minutes…

Christmas is near!

And not so coincidentally, that’s the name of the new theme I just loaded here, thanks to the generosity of the brilliant Nicki (an Alabama sister!) at Nitallica.org. Do me a favor–vote for Nicki’s free Wordpress Christmas theme here, please!

MVRWC Mobile

So, do any of you read this blog on a mobile device? If so, what are your thoughts about the mobile site layout?

I’ve been doing a little surfing on my cell phone lately, and you know what? The internet kinda sucks that way. Not this blog since it’s mobile-enabled, but just about every other blog does. I certainly don’t expect everyone to get their sites mobile-friendly, but for Wordpress users, it’s really easy. All you have to do is upload and activate the Wordpress Mobile plugin. Sure, it’s a little plain–okay, VERY plain. That’s kind of a good thing though when using a mobile device, though.

QUESTION for PDA/cellphone users: What sites do you like the best when browsing on your mobile device?

(That means you too, Vinnie, since I know you surf on the Jack Bauer phone!)

By the way, I forgot how freaking amazing the internet is with the Opera browser. It really is the best browser by a longshot–if you don’t need your Firefox extensions. (Obviously, IE users don’t need them, so what are you waiting for?)
I’m also using Opera Mini on the cell phone, so I just fired up Opera and synchronized my bookmarks with Opera Mini (after I imported all my 50 bazillion Firefox bookmarks to Opera 9.5, that is). Best mobile feature evar. If you’re using a mobile device, you simply must try Opera Mini.

The question is, can I live without my Firefox extensions? Doubtful…although the CPU strain might force me to. Grrrrr.

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