June 2006 Archives

Matt gives us a link to the Lifehack poll on what is the best Blogging system out there. The poll skips a number of systems though like Drupal, Serendipity (The one I used to use), Qumana and many others. I still like the CMS systems that I use like PHPNuke and Back-End though. You can do more with them.

Falling Over Seats gives us her opinion about manners now a days. I've been meaning to post about this for quite some time. I see a lot of poor manners in today's age. Right now, the person to my left is talking into her cell phone nice and loud. The person to her left is eating away and has their radio turned up loud as well. (At least he's using earphones but still) The lady to my right forgot to rinse her hair when she took her shower this morning and I can still smell the spampoo. *sigh* Its everywhere though. I've lost count how many times I've had to deal with Charlotte Transit drivers who won't let passengers ride their buses because of their skin color and goodness knows they won't deal with any complaint over there. Folks talking loud on the buses too is always fun. Had some lady screaming right in my ear this morning. When I go and help some of the churches and groups work with the homeless, there's always one or two trouble makers who protest when we can't help them with more than what we have. I always get asked for money and sometimes folks pitch a fit when they get told no. I would love to help where I could but I'm on disability as well. That monthly check is barely covering what I have to pay out for rent, electricity and bus passes. Heck, that's one of the reasons I always go and pitch in. I get fed and that's one less meal I have to worry about. Sometimes in the posts I make at some of the forums I visit, I have folks point out my bad spelling. Little do they know that I spell pretty well for someone that has a five inch tremor some afternoons. They can't take the time to send an email or a private message. Instead they have to post publicly about it and draw attention to it. That's one of the reasons why I no longer go to any of these Kim Possible and Daria forums I used to visit and have fun in. Got rather old real fast. Well, it gave me something to post about. I don't get a change to make real posts that often.

There was quite a hubbub a few months back when it got out that some Victoria's Secret stores refused to let breastfeeding mothers nurse on the premises. The company issued an apology and made it clear that the bra giant supports breastfeeding.

Apparently there was another incident last week, this time at a Victoria's Secret in Boston. A mother was not allowed to nurse her baby in a changing room.  The employee told her it would be "unsanitary" and directed the mom to a bathroom instead, citing "store policy."

ProMom has a letter you can sign and send (online) to company honchos. It asks that they do a better job of educating their employees about breastfeeding.

(Note to self: Do not try on clothes there if the changing rooms are really less sanitary than a toilet.)

Taken from here.

Just a quick note that I've gone ahead and installed a new game: Dragon Knights Play as a Wizard, Paladin, or Warrior. Battle monsters, go on quests and all that. I'm working on adding in new mods as I go. Please let me know if you have any issues. Thanks, -drmike

A long time back, Kothoga did me a favor and uploaded a number of screen captures for the Kim Possible episode, Overdue. I had forgotten to mention what he did and just wanted to point that out. You can find the screen captures here: Kim Possible Screen Captures - Overdue One or two of those also come from other places like ARA, Ron Stoppable.net and other sites. Again, they are free to use elsewhere. Just don't overkill my bandwidth. :)

"I'll pay for your hookers!" *chuckle* Sorry, I just like listening to that. :)

Matt mentions that Andy Skelton did an interview with iTimes recently. One thing that I like is the following:

A question that's on a lot of our minds is why Wordpress.com doesn't allow custom template editing. Although XSS (Cross Site Scripting) vulnerabilites are a viable threat, is there anyway that Automattic can protect the site and allow this functionality at the same time? Obviously we want to provide as much freedom as possible without sacrificing the performance and security of the site. Customization is the single most requested feature on WordPress.com. It's something we're always improving - such as with Widgets and the new version of Regulus with custom header images. It's probably possible to create a new templating system for WordPress so that anyone can make their own template without exposing things that should remain secure on the server. There are people working on this kind of thing in different ways: plugins, flexible themes, even core mods. Most folks are very happy with the options we provide, too. They're very vocal about it in the feedback form. The few people who really need their own theme are encouraged to run WordPress on their own server space so that they have full control over their site. Personally, I encourage anyone who wants to make their own theme to install WordPress on their home computer and play with it. If you fall in love with it, you'll probably want to rent space on a shared server and then you can also have your own domain name. It's a lot of fun, but when you just need a place to blog you'll still have the ability to do so on WordPress.com. I have blogs there as well as elsewhere.

I wish more people over at the support forums would understand that. :)

Weblog Tools Collection points us at a nifty plugin for WordPress: Title Grabber. What it does is when you save a post in WordPress, it takes what's in the title Tags of any page that you are linking towards and places that as the title portion of the tag in your post. So, when a visitor to your site moves their mouse over a link in one of your posts, up comes the title information automatically. Only two issues though. - You have to reedit any of your old posts that you feel the need to include this in. That's required because it doesn't process this information on the fly to save bandwidth, both yours and the other sites. - It doesn't work on my 2.0.3 install for some reason. I get header errors where my Image uploader thingie is. Of course, I have a number of things not working with this theme. *sigh* I have left a comment with the author and I do hope we can work something out. ...and it royally screwed up my blog.

Weblog Tools Collection gives us a link to Christian Montoya's suggestion on featuring your most important Posts within your blog. One thing that he states that doesn't surprise me:

99% of your blog's worth is based on your 10 most popular entries.

That's pretty much true around here. The FAQ on Uploading pictures used over at Wordpress.com pretty much makes up at least a third of my traffic followed by my work with the YouTube downloader and all the Kim Possible posts I've made during the last year or so. I do something along those lines with my 25 Most Read Post Page which I put up a few days ago instead of using the sidebar. I need to do a featured list though someday.

Someone (They mentioned that they wanted to remain anonymous) recently sent me an email explaining how they enjoyed my blog, thanked me for all the help that I've offered people over the years online, and wondered if there was someway they could repay me. I mentioned that sometimes people send me Gift Cards that I use myself or use to help out some of the area homeless. (Last week, I got a $50 WalMart card that I used to help someone set up their kitchen.) I also have a wonderful person picking up my hosting tab for six months. :)

Anyway, our local StarBucks was handing out $5 giftcards uptown here in Charlotte a few days ago and I grabbed one. I was just noticing that it is reloadable. I was thinking that since it was orignally for five bucks, than reloads were also for five bucks but I now know they're not. They start at $20.

But anyway, if you would like to contribute to my coffee fund, feel free. Twenty bucks would probably keep me in caffeine for at least a week if not more. I don't go into the 4 and 5 bucks a cup drinks, just the large normal coffees.

If you would like to do something for me that doesn't involve money, feel free to take a quick glance at my wishlist page at the suggestions there or vote on the poll in the sidebar.

Thanks though for visiting. :)
-drmike