Tagged: website
I FINALLY DID IT! can you believe it... I've been saying it for ever... but I finally got some free time at work to work on it... and... its still a work in progress... style sheets need to be finished... some other code needs to be done... I need to bring back my photo albums... which will be new and improved... but... its running django... and my own custom blog app. It seems a little slow to me with me so I'll work on some tuning options, but it runs fast on my laptop... My laptop is quite a bit more powerful than this vhost.... I've disable php from my server!
Well... I"ve been playing with Python for work for a couple years now... and over the last 6 months or so, I've been using django for various projects. And I've decided my blog as well as everything else on this site will be replaced by django apps. Some that I will write and others that I will find and download off the net. I've been using and keeping wordpress updated for all these years and well... I have to say, I don't really like it, I don't feel its allowed me to make the sites or extensions that I want within the templates framework they they supply. So, over the next couple months, I will be putting a new site together with a new design as well. The hardest part is going to be getting all my old posts into the new database. Since I don't have many comments (only 4 or so for the years I've been doing it) I'm not going to bother keeping those... as that would make the task even harder... But a new design will come with the site... one I have seen a few examples and have my mind racing over... but I don't know what it will be just yet. should be fun.
I've been using wordpress now for a couple years, and while I don't have any major complaints against it... I think I'd just like "more". Or... maybe I just need to take advantage of the features it has... however... the whole slashdot/digg effect flooding out wordpress servers... not that I think I'll ever get slash dotted, but... what can I say... i'm a geek and I like to tinker occasionally. Currently my biggest reason for not doing anything, is I'd have to rewrite a whole new theme... I spent a good couple hours doing the one I have and I just don't know where I'd find the time to do it again...
So... I guess I wouldn't expect it any time soon.. however i may get bored or suddenly have an urge and alot of time on my hands so you never know... I did come home with a new car last week...
November 27, 2007 Posted by mitch |
website |
Well... If your seeing this post, then your hitting my new web server! Its got about 2.5x's more RAM than the old one so, we should be running on less swap than before... hopefully its faster for everyone.... and more stable...
November 23, 2007 Posted by mitch |
website |
I'm going to be making some changes to the site involving DNS servers and mail servers and such over the coming week or so, so you may experience intermittent problems with my my site... be patient :)
September 2, 2007 Posted by mitch |
website |
It took me long enough but I finally fixed the categories stuff I broke when I was trying to get youtube videos embedded into my posts. Eventually I'll come back to that and get it working but for now... one step at a time.
August 27, 2006 Posted by mitch |
website |
Not sure if anyone has noticed yet, since they haven't worked for a year or so... but I do have working comments again. So please feel free to leave a message if you choose.
Also, I've been making other minor changes to my CSS file and a few other things, so if things break for you... let me know. I don't test anything with IE, so I don't currently know how things look there. My reasoning: Download firefox! its better.
August 17, 2006 Posted by mitch |
website |
Its a sad, sad, day. I removed my display of my amazon wish list. It used SOAP to load it and it was really cool... however the time it took to load my web page was really anoying... if only it could do some kind of cashing or background fetching of the data. Anyway, I have a link that should go directly to my wish list still... and if you want to buy me anything thats where to look ;)
June 27, 2006 Posted by mitch |
website |
I did some looking today for themes to see if I could find one I like. Well, I've got two that I think are "OK" this current theme being one of them. The other theme has some of the same problems. However they both implement some nice features as well... So I'll be rotating the themes every now and then, and deciding which features I like between the two of them and I'll then encorporate some of my old themes features (which is what I think these two are missing) and these two new themes.
Oh! comments work so give me a shout about what all might like and dislike... and I'll start making a list as well in the comments for this post.
June 25, 2006 Posted by mitch |
website |
I've had broken comment links for a long time... just haven't taken the time to fix them... Currently the link is no longer broken, however the box for allowing comments doesn't show up. Its in the code, but it doesn't work. I'm not sure why at the moment... I'm thinking it still has something to do with my apache config. I'll be testing things off and on, so if my website looks a little weird from time to time, its just me testing. Try back in a minute or two and it should be back to normal.
*UPDATE*
Well it seems like its just my theme that has problems with the comments... which means that I will have to completely debug my theme to find out why its having problems... OR... I think its probably time I write a new theme... complete with new colors and everything... So, expect some site design changes in the comming months (what a time frame eh? Sorry... life keeps me busy) Complete with a new layout and I'll even include some fixes for my quotes so they don't mess up the layout when it displays one of the long quotes. And if I find the time... I might make it work ok with IE :)
April 4, 2006 Posted by mitch |
website |
I finally moved everything over to my new web host. It still needs some improvements here and there, but its looking like its ready to go. Let me know what you think!
February 2, 2006 Posted by mitch |
website |
Well, we here at metauser.net have finally experienced downtime because of my own doing... For whatever reason, I was told that my web hosts DNS servers were going to be changing and I didn't see the email.... so metauser.net became unreachable for a while last week... I have since fixed the DNS problems however, I'm also in the process of preparing a new server to move to. More details will follow, however, Its going to be a virtual machine (using Xen), so hopefully that will allow me to provide a lot more cool features down the road.
And I did get a chance to upgrade to Wordpress 2.0! So far its still an amazing product, I love it. Props to those that put their time and dedication to it.
January 21, 2006 Posted by mitch |
website |
I'm going to be upgrading to the latest wordpress version... if the site goes down in the next hour or so, that will be why... please bear with me while I make this change. I will work on getting the comments working tonight as well :)
October 20, 2005 Posted by mitch |
website |
Incase you didn't notice, I've migrated my blog from bBlog to WordPress. The reason mostly was because of the comment spam. I've been getting 15+ a day lately and I couldn't take it anymore... I'd set bblog to not even allow comments on any of my current posts and it was still allowing them, among other things... So it was time to migrate to something with more features. This has alot of them. One of my upgrades you'll notice currently is the Amazon Wish List. :) Now you know what to buy me! Anyway, I'll be working on getting the RSS feeds back as well. I'll be rolling out other features as time permits as well. Going to be lots of fun! :)
September 8, 2005 Posted by mitch |
website |
I missed my 1 year anniverserary of blogging! Wow time flies... However, its a good thing it was only my blogging anniverserary.... Missing another anniverserary would have me in the dog house for a very long time. :) Anyway March of 2004 was my first post! Amazing hope to keep 'em comming... one of these days I'll go back and read through everything I've written...
July 27, 2005 Posted by mitch |
website |
Not sure what it is lately... but, as soon as I delete some comment spam, I get more back... so... I'm now banning IP addresses... I hate to do it... really I do. But I have no choice... I'm sure this won't be the last batch I have to do, but it must be done.
July 27, 2005 Posted by mitch |
website |
I've finally found some time to get the latest and greatest version of bBlog installed. I love the new color changes to the admin section... as the old ones were kinda... plain and very boring. Anyhow, I hope this new software will help me keep a better handle on all the comment spam I've been getting lately... if not, I'll have to figure something else out...
The trolls are at it again... I've change my comment posting delay to 30 minutes to help thwart some of the comment spam. As a result of some people, that deem the internet as a new medium for their get rich quick scams. Such protection has become nessisary.
Not sure why people seem to think its ok, but blog spamming (like email spamming) has to go. I mean... really. Why do people seem to think that it will make them more money? Sure in the short run it might be good... and earn some, but in the long run? I think it only does more harm than good in my personal opinion. That said, I won't remove comments, even if they're going against what I have said. However, I *will* remove any blog spam I see. Why? because I hate it and they don't deserve to be in business.
I wrote a simple bash script to resize images I pull off my digital camera because resizing all of the AutoExpo images was a royal pain... Anyway, it does *very* little error checking (basically only checks to make sure you gave it atleast one argument...) so use it at your own risk!
#!/bin/bash
# bash script to automatically scale images to 25% of their original size
# using ImageMagik.
if [ ! -n "$1" ]
then
echo "Usage: `basename $0` [image path]/ [new resized path]/"
exit
fi
for file in `ls $1`; do
convert -monitor $1$file -resize 25% +profile "*" $2$file
done;
I've been unsure of what to write about as of late... Blogging in general has two sides. One, is freedom of speech. The other however is where the corporate types get a little uptight about what you say. They even go as far as sueing for things such as defamation, or even lately an appartment complex is sueing http://apartmentratings.com because people have posted unfavorable reviews about the appartments. Personally I'm on the side of free speech here assuming the posts were made by actual (former?) tenants with real complaints. They have every right to share those complaints with anyone who will listen. With the use of the internet, this becomes MUCH easier, and maybe it will inspire (or force..) the service and manufacturing sectors to stop pushing crap on us, because now our opinion will be heard much easier. Personally I love sites that allow user feedback about products and services. I used them when I bought my phone which conviced me it would be ok to buy it.
Blogging can also get one into trouble with their employer(if the employer ever found out about the blog and read it that is...). I would love to write about more of my life and things going on, however this thought has kept me from actually doing it. I'm unsure about how much I would be able to say without getting into some kind of heat. I'm also sure it wouldn't take much of it to get fired. Which is why I haven't said much of anything about it.
This alone however, wont stop me from blogging completly. I will continue to keep sheding atleast some of my insite's on life as I feel inspired.
Phrame Tutorial with Smarty
Found this article, figure I'm going to start here with creating some web apps for work. Should be really pretty easy it seems. Anyhow I'm tired and I'm going to bed.
September 9, 2004 Posted by mitch |
website |
Just learned that some emails that have been destined for my address were bounced by my webserver because of "Local" problems.... seems lately I've been having more and more problems with them. Frankly I'm not to happy at the moment. I've had to have things reset a couple of times because of "abuse" problems from other users. And on top of that, it just takes a long time to load some times. Not every time just most of the time. I don't have anything that is extremely taxing running on here. In fact this is a fairly simple web site... mostly because I'm only running this blog. After next weeks over with(will be in RHCE training/test taking), I will probably start looking into a new web host because I don't like the fact that emails are bouncing because of "local" issues.
I bought this book a couple of weeks ago... I have yet to really open it and read through it.... Which when I bought it I thought I'd be able to jump right into it. However I've been studing for my RHCE test in september... which is comming up and I have ALOT to prepare for... However, hopefully I will dive into this MVC (Model View Controler) pattern for php applications. I know Java's been doing it for a while. I'm just to the point where I really see the usefulness in it. On top of that, it has a chapter about smarty which got me excited :) And as for my blog here... I think I'm going to be rewriting it from scratch again. However, this time I do believe I'm going to stick with it being my own creation. I will allow hopefully easy additions of other php classes and I plan on using some to begin with (smarty and pear) anyhow, hopefully that goes together soon.
I've been made aware of how cheap virtual servers are getting... Linode has vhosts for $20/month with 3GB of space, and I get root! This is looking very promising to me... I am probably going to be giving up netflix for it, but I feel like its worth it. I mean... my own box that I get root on, but I don't have to host it myself? man... Seems like a deal to me, because then no one could tell me what I can or can't run. I wouldn't really need to know my boxes ip back here anymore...
July 17, 2004 Posted by mitch |
website |
I've been meaning to make some updates for a while... I finally got to it today. If you click to make a comment on the post, you'll notice it actually has formating now instead of just being thrown on the page. I'm not saying that its finished by any means, as I'm not really in a creative mood. However, it has needed the update. Enjoy.
I'm finally breaking down and going to really learn php classes. I've found that in order to duplicate how this site works for my own needs, I'm going to have to learn classes. That way I can seamlessly use smarty for templates, and somehow implement a plugin system so I can create a base Authentication, User Administration, Site Administration, and Themes, and then be able to plug in different "sites" into that framework without much trouble. I might eventually release the source for it, as I don't believe there are many frameworks that are simple. They all try to implement some type of api to plug into... Where I think mine (atleast will start out this way) won't have one really... just have to include a different class, and add it to the main navigation links... Anyway, those are some thoughts, i will keep this updated with my progress.
May 30, 2004 Posted by mitch |
website |
I've been working on it all day today... I rewote the style sheet from scratch for my theme, as well as changing quite a bit of the template. I still have to move the changes to the rest of the template files. But that shouldn't be to difficult....
So, what do you think?
May 29, 2004 Posted by mitch |
website |
Well, I've been saying I was going to do it for months (or years?) that I was going to update my blog... so now maybe I'll keep it up to date. Anyway, this is it! Its not done by any means. But these are the colors I'm going to be using and I'm going to work on a unified theme for the bookmarks as well. (or maybe i'll rewrite it? who knows) Anyway, this, I'm almost positive, is its final incarnation.
And, as a bonus, comments work! (I don't ever remember them working before... atleast I hope thats why no one ever left me one...)
and more to come.
May 27, 2004 Posted by mitch |
website |
I'm still thinking about design changes, and hoping bblog is as extenable as it says it is... because I plan on doing alot of modifications to it. I guess the biggest problem I have with it right now, is the fact that it doesn't have any session control with the main section of the site... *shrug* other than that... time will tell.
May 25, 2004 Posted by mitch |
website |
Ooooh, I just thought I'd post again as I'm just getting ready to go to bed now.
But, this templating is going to be MUCH easier than I had thought it was going to be... truth be told... I thought it was going to be somewhat of a pain... I really need to look more into smarty!! I should be using it on all my projects at work too! Dave's going to hate me if I tell him he should as well... :)
Anyway, colors are comming together nicely, (i know... they kinda stand out don't they? yellow, orange, dark gray and black) but I like them. Also, my news feeds!!
Anyhow, its bed time.
May 25, 2004 Posted by mitch |
website |
Well,
I've downloaded some of the latest themes from CVS, and have decided that none of them are very good... So... I've changed the theme to a one called "green" as it has somewhat of the layout I want, I am just going to make a copy of it, and edit from there. I hope to keep it useable in the process... This will be my first project using php's smarty, so its going to be a learning experience.
May 25, 2004 Posted by mitch |
website |
This is my first post... There will be many more now that I have this. I think I like it alot. It still doesnt have stuff to allow me to mark things as private... but thats ok for now.
first things first however... I NEED A NEW THEME!!
I think I'm going to basically rework the look to be exactly like it was on the previous site. But time will tell.
