2003 October - laze.net

Archive for October, 2003

Diggin the new digs

Things seem to be shaping up pretty well after the hosting move. I’ve been tracking error reports and fixing things (I wouldn’t want people looking for Maury Povich to get lost, after all!), and I’m really pleased with how responsive the new host is to support tickets. I’m getting a response time of under an hour for most things. So, thumbs up to VS Hosting.

I changed the “Recent Comments” section on the right to “Recent Activity.” You now see the seven most recently commented entries with duplicates eliminated.

Also, the photo album is up and running with many of the old albums converted over (this process just served to remind me how similar my own “Gallerywalk” script was to the new Photostack). I think I’ve worked around the IE CSS weirdness, too.

The following domains will be moving starting tonight and will hopefully be done by Sunday: dailyping.com, halfpintmusic.com, vegblog.org, egoinc.org, huyen.org, and uajournal.com.

Tell me, does the site seem more responsive? Does commenting seem to move a lot more quickly?

Author name:: laze
Publish date:: October 30th, 2003
Discussion:: 10 Comments
Categories:: Site stuff
Tags:

Update on the move

If you see this post, then the propagation of laze.net to a new server has reached you. Here’s a quick summary of what’s new and improved with our new web host:

More space. And a lot of it (for much less money). Thank goodness.
More bandwidth. Which means I won’t feel constrained any longer.
Better server administration. I have much more control over my domain, which makes life a lot easier for me.
During the switch, I decided to make several changes in my MT configuration:

Future-proof URLs. I used Brad Choate‘s MT-IfEmpty plug-in combined with some of Mark Pilgrim‘s suggestions. This means that while the URLs for my blog entires have changed yet again, they won’t change with any future server moves. That means if people looking for me, Maury Povich, will always be able to count on their Google search results.
Switch MT from Berkeley DB to MySQL. This combined with the seemingly better server response means that you will no longer have to wait for a minute for your comment to be submitted. This was painful on the old server. Hopefully, this will also reduce multiple postings of the same comment.

It was a semi-painful process moving so much information to a new host, but I’m confident that after the kinks get worked out, everything will be just peachy. If you run into any errors, let me know.

Author name:: laze
Publish date:: October 28th, 2003
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: Site stuff
Tags:: server move

RIP, Rerun

Just as I was posting an RIP, Rerun link to the sideblog, the lyrics in the song I was listening to gave me a jolt:

It feels so good to be a Crooklyn Dodger,
What’s happening to Rerun and Roger?
I think I seen ‘em wearing Timberlands and running down the block from Dwayne.

Author name:: laze
Publish date:: October 23rd, 2003
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: In the news
RIP
Tags:

Amazon’s (ego-)search-inside-the-book feature

Wow.

Amazon now lets you search the entire text of 120,000 books (that’s 33 million pages). This is simply astounding.

Of course, being an egomaniac, I searched for myself, and sure enough, got valid results (betcha didn’t know I contributed an entry to that book!).

Something even I didn’t know, “laze.net” appeared in a screenshot that appeared in the RoboHELP 2000 Bible.

That’s an impressive search function.

Author name:: laze
Publish date:: October 23rd, 2003
Discussion:: 3 Comments
Categories:: Mighty neato links
Tags:

Return to Sleepaway Camp: The Story of a Lowly Extra

This past weekend, I had an opportunity to do something I’ve wanted to try for a long time: I was an extra in a horror movie. And not just any horror movie, mind you, but a sequel to the cult classic Sleepaway Camp, directed by the original director and featuring much of the original cast. Here’s the full story…

Ouch.

Paul hurts my eyes.

Author name:: laze
Publish date:: October 20th, 2003
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: Mighty neato links
Tags:

Peelin’ trees

Yesterday we had some heavy winds in our area… gusts got up to 59 mph in our town. While we escaped the hurricane without any problems, yesterday’s winds took a toll on a tall tree in our back yard. I came home last night and heard a noise on the roof… I went upstairs and looked out the guest room window and saw that part of a tree branch had split and was peeling away from the tree, and that the ends of the branches were hitting the roof. It was mighty pricey to get it trimmed. I took a few shots:

In tree1.jpg, you can see the split (taken from the guest room).

tree2.jpg is a close up of the branch from the ground. As you can see, only a few tiny branches are touching the roof, but the branch that’s up against the house makes a lot of noise when the wind gusts.

tree3.jpg is a long shot from the ground.

Author name:: laze
Publish date:: October 16th, 2003
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: My life, my life, my life...
Tags:

Morning sky o’ fire

Check out this amazing morning sky (click to enlarge):

So this is what I miss by not getting up at 6am everyday.

Author name:: laze
Publish date:: October 15th, 2003
Discussion:: 3 Comments
Categories:: Miscellaneous
Tags:

Listen up, the old man’s speaking!

Today I turned 28. Am I officially an “old fart” yet? I know unofficially I’ve been one for the last six or seven years…

Got a free lunch from a co-worker today and the wifester (or is this the link?) is taking me out for some grub tonight. Plus I still have Black Magic Cake at home courtesy of Momma mia from the weekend co-celebration in NJ with my niece, who turned one earlier this month.

This weekend: something that could potentially be incredibly cool. I’m holding back details now; photos on Monday.

I still have to make the server move I’ve been planning for several weeks. If nothing else, I’m good at procrastinating.

I had a brief inspiration last night to spin off an old section of my site to a new domain and breathe some new life into it. That may still happen.

Anyone have an old modem for a laptop they’d be willing to sell me for a pittance?

Have you tried CleverKeys yet? Highlight any word(s) in any application, hit a key combination, and you’re automatically taken to the dictionary.com entry or a web search for that word/phrase.

Author name:: laze
Publish date:: October 14th, 2003
Discussion:: 6 Comments
Categories:: My life, my life, my life...
Tags:

Stopping Comment Spam

In case you haven’t heard, Jay Allen has released the MT-Blacklist plug-in to help fight against the recent surge in comment spam (I’ve been deleting up to six a day and it’s really starting to piss me off). Considering how quickly he pulled it together, it’s well-designed and full-featured. Needless to say it’s implemented on this blog (and my other blogs as well).

So, if you’ve gotten used to the Lolita comments and have looked forward to them, I’m sorry… they are no more.

Author name:: laze
Publish date:: October 14th, 2003
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: Blogs
Tags: