Monthly Archives: March 2006

WordPress Updated

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tbbs-land in now running the latest, greatest WordPress. Version 2.0.2. A flawless upgrade, one which makes me want to crow about my extraordinary computing acumen. Then I realize that I’m standing on the shoulders of giants, and that I really should be tipping my hat to the WordPress team. My hat is now officially tipped.

While I was in the upgrade process, I converted the sidebar to be completely widget-driven. I can now change the sidebar at will. What power! More giant shoulders.

I feel humbled by such tools. My writing isn’t even worthy of being mimeographed and distributed to people as they exit the subway, and yet I have a marvelous platform like this. Humbling. Fun, but humbling.

-k-

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WordPress Widgets

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A new plugin for WP enables sidebar widgets. A widget is basically a relocatable snippet of code that enables you to customize your WP blog’s sidebar, without direct sidebar.php hacking. You just drop widgets into the sidebar via WP admin’s presentation option.

I just took the plugin for a test drive, and it is extremely easy to use. That’s the nice thing about a low-traffic site like this; I can experiment live without inconveniencing anyone.

It’s fresh out of the box new, and themes need a few tweaks to support widgets, but this is gonna be a good thing for bloggers who use WordPress, especially as new widgets are developed and submitted.

I may even make a few myself, after I get more comfortable; this is a great way to learn WP internals and PHP in small bites.

Read more about widgets here.

-k-

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Geek Me!

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After all these years being a Linux dabbler, I’m downloading the Fedora 5.0 isos as I type this. Credit cheap reliable broadband, and the desire of this old dog to learn some new tricks.

-k-

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RIP, Paul Dana

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I tried to write this yesterday, but just couldn’t. Yesterday, at Homestead-Miami Speedway, rookie IRL driver Paul Dana was fatally injured in a warm-up crash prior to the start of the race.

Even casual readers of this ol’ blog know I’m a race fan, particularly a NASCAR fan. However, I’ve been following all types of racing since I was 10 years old, and have the utmost respect for those who strap on a helmet, and push any type of vehicle to the limits of man vs machine. So, I consider myself one of the racing fan fraternity, regardless of the series involved.

There’s a saying that always gets mentioned in times like these, “When one member of the racing community hurts, we all hurt.” And that is true. My heartfelt sympathy to Paul’s family, friends, and racing team.

-k-

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Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr.

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Oh, to be able to write a tribute like Jack Sparks just posted about Buck Owens.

Make no mistake, though. What he did between 1963 and 1967 was pure. The exposed wires from the Buckaroos’ amped up guitars were the frayed nerves of hillbilly men and women who worked too hard, drank too much, and desperately clung to the hope that tomorrow might be different. People still bought the sappy treacly shit that came out of Nashville, but Buck drove them bananas, like Hank Williams had done the previous decade. If Buck and Harlan Howard made a song about a guy getting in a bar fight or leaving his wife, it was because they saw it happen the night they wrote the song. If the guitars were wide open and high on treble, it was because that’s what the dancers were demanding out on the dance floor.

And, putting today’s “country” in its proper niche:

You’re probably going to see a bunch of assholes like Chesney, Adkins, and Urban coming out on stage with red, white and blue guitars in the next couple of weeks; don’t buy any of it.

Read the whole thing; I’m glad this ol’ blog can even link to such good words.

-k-

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Busman’s Holiday

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snowball, SWMBO’s iMac, has been making a rather disconcerting noise after it’s been up 2 or 3 hours. I don’t think it is disk-related, but on the chance it is, I spent yesterday creating bootable clones of snowball, and the voyager laptop, on an external 250 GB firewire drive. There was enough left of the drive to create a 100 GB or so extra backup partition.

So, I’m good to go for a while. The problem I have with ginormous “backup” partitions is that they tend to become a cesspit full of folders named “Stuff”, “Misc”, “Photos after California and before Martinsville, 2004”, etc. Data is there, probably good data, but its presentation and retrieval makes it only marginally better than no data at all.

So I need a set-and-forget backup strategy. I have an old PC, as well as a SunBlade, that may play a part in this. Either would need a big honkin’ drive (cheap), and I think I could implement something using rsync over ssh1. This could be used to backup my Linux laptop as well. That’s what I’m thinking now, anyhow. A little planning, and another weekend project could be taking flight.

-k-

1 – If I use the SunBlade, I could mirror the drives with Solstice Disk Suite. I like that idea.