Guest stars at Beer n Blog
I totally forgot to take a picture yesterday but as I was going through the pictures from the real camera I noticed a picture of my dear sibs holding my iPhone. Sure enough, I looked in the photo library and there was a picture. It wasn’t exactly 6:06 but it was a reasonable facsimile. Everyone is in town for a couple of overlapping days so it was nice to invite them out to see what this event is that I keep talking about. Tonight my beer is Stone Old Guardian, a wonderfully hoppy 11% barley wine. Going to have to keep it to just a couple of these tonight.
How many times have we been here?
I’m working on Matt’s computer and watching some TV. I have thous…hund…a bunch of these types of pictures. Me working on a computer while watching TV. It’s a very, very common theme in my life. Matt got a new laptop so it had to be set up to not suck. I’m still not up to the speed I need to be on Vista but a couple more of these and…it’ll be time for Windows 7 and I’ll have to learn all over again. It does keep my life interesting I guess. As soon as I get this finished I’m off to bed. I’ve been teetering on the edge of getting sick and I’m trying everything I can to keep that from actually happening, mostly just sleeping as much as possible. Along with sleeping I’m keeping up a steady intake stream of Pseudophedrine, Dextromethorphan, Guaifenesin, Vitamins B and C and water. Lots and lots of water.
Raining in Vegas
I don’t have the local weather history in front of me but it seems to me that we’re getting more precipitation this year than most. Personally I’m a big fan. Gloomy, overcast and chilly, sprinkle in some rain and I’m a happy man. Summer and temperatures that rival the surface of the sun will be here soon enough so let’s enjoy this weather while it’s still here.
Korean spaghetti western action movie? Oh yes
Donald had come over for the evening and in classic “us” fashion we have pulled out the movie “The Good, the Bad and the Weird”. I heard about this about a year ago and didn’t think it was ever going to make it to the US but it has. So far it has been everything I hoped for with far better story and acting than I was led to believe it would have. After the joy that was “Push” yesterday, this is the perfect pallette cleanser of a movie. My only other activity for the day is adding tags to all my past posts, watching “Burn Notice” and ignoring my growing laundry problem. So far I’ve been pretty successful, tags are coming along (slowly), I’m all caught up on “Burn Notice” and the laundry is still sitting in a big mound and the washing machine is still silent.
Do not go see “Push” under any circumstances
We had a “successful” 2nd year of “Crappy movie on St. Valentine’s Day” event tonight. I say “successful” because, really, the description of the event has the word crappy in it. It started last year with the watching of “Jumper” and let me tell you, we found a worthy successor. “Push” was pure crap from end to end. The only good discussion we had was if it was better or worse than “Jumper”. That should tell you something. Unless, of course, you liked “Jumper” in which case you’ll probably like “Push”. Bad special effects, giant plot holes, Deus ex was machining all over the place. Save yourselves. Watch “Coraline” instead. If you’ve already seen that, just stay home and read a book or something. Maybe stare at a wall. I guarantee it’ll be more entertaining.
The real new face of 606
We have reached the end of an era. The old homebrewed codebase for 606diaries.com is dead. Long live the new codebase. I didn’t write it this time but instead went with a tried and true source, Wordpress. The amount of people that use this code for their blogs is staggering. That means that the amount of people working on the code and writing new plugins and themes and functionality is also staggering. 5 years ago it was no big deal to make my own software. It wasn’t any better or worse than anything else. These days it’s a whole new ballgame.
What does the new code mean for you
Most of the changed functionality comes in the form of comment changes.
1) Comment threading: I have turned on comment threading so instead of comments referring to other comments obliquely, now you can actually explicitly reply to a comment someone else has made
2) Comment editing: Horribly Mattfinger a post or accidentally post twice? You can now edit your own comments!
3) Avatar support: You can now pick a little tiny avatar to represent you next to all your comments. For the moment it’s hooked up to this service called gravatar.com so if you want, head on over and grab an account. Gravatars work on all wordpress sites so once you sign up for one once you’ll have a presence on any of the thousands of blogs that support it.
4) Recent comments: There was no real way to replicate the 15 (3) thing so I found something that works (I think) even a little better. Over on the right hand side there is a “recent comments” section. You’ll be able to immediately see who posted what comment where in the recent past.
5) Visual: Different thumbnails, different image sizes on the post pages, overall much more modern look.
6) Archive: Over on the right you can now browse month by month without having to actually page back a week at a time.
7) User stuff: Down at the far bottom right you’ll see a login link. All the old names and passwords are moved over so you should be able to log in as always. Now you won’t have to do it twice though every time. My only regret is that I’ll never know what that bug was on the old codebase.
Hopefuly you all like it as much as I do.
You guys talk a lot
