A Singer, A Song

I’ve been slowly but surely wriggling my way out of Microsoft’s grasp, and thanks to the fine folks at Google, that’s getting easier and easier to do.

Seeing today’s announcement from Google,  downloaded their nifty little setup program, and within 2 minutes was seeing all of my Google Calendar items in iCal.

Very cool.

After having put it off for far too long, I recently admitted that the little voice in my head was right: I needed to back up the user data on the upstairs computer. That’s the one with all of my MP3s and digital camera images… the one that, were something to go wrong, I’d probably seriously consider hari-kari. So I trekked off to BestBuy and came home with a 1 TB My Book World external drive (a network-attached storage device).

I jumped through all kinds of hoops trying to get the included free WD Anywhere Backup software to work. After repeated failures over several days of use, I found out that the combined file name and path had to be fewer than 256 characters long. That limitation may not be a problem for some people, but I’ve gone to a LOT of trouble structuring my MP3 collection into multiple nested folders to keep everything organized, so the suggestion from Western Digital Support to start renaming folders and moving files around was unthinkable. I uninstalled their unhelpful little piece of software and started looking around for a replacement.

That’s when I found Cobian Backup. This amazing application is FREE to use and is far more robust than the offering from Western Digital. If you’re in the market for backup software, I’m convinced it’s as good as anything you might find to spend your hard-earned money on. Check it out!

via boingboing:

Hey suckers! Did you buy DRM music from Wal*Mart instead of downloading MP3s for free from the P2P networks? Well, they’re repaying your honesty by taking away your music. Unless you go through a bunch of hoops (that you may never find out about, if you’ve changed email addresses or if you’re not a very technical person), your music will no longer be playable after October 9th.

But don’t worry, this will never ever happen to all those other DRM companies — unlike little fly-by-night mom-and-pop operations like Wal*Mart, the DRM companies are rock-ribbed veterans of commerce and industry, sure to be here for a thousand years. So go on buying your Audible books, your iTunes DRM songs, your Zune media, your EA games… None of these companies will ever disappear, nor will the third-party DRM suppliers they use. They are as solid and permanent as Commodore, Atari, the Soviet Union, the American credit system and the Roman Empire.

Boy, the entertainment industry sure makes a good case for ripping them off, huh? Buy your media and risk having it confiscated by a DRM-server shutdown. Take it for free and keep it forever.

Keep reading… there’s more in the original article, including a copy of the email sent out by Wal-Mart.

I’m not sure that the motivating philosophy is exactly spot-on, but this is still a very, very good thing.

Why this project?

Never in history have so many people had so much information, so many tools at their disposal, so many ways of making good ideas come to life. Yet at the same time, so many people, of all walks of life, could use so much help, in both little ways and big.

In the midst of this, new studies are reinforcing the simple wisdom that beyond a certain very basic level of material wealth, the only thing that increases individual happiness over time is helping other people.

In other words, helping helps everybody, helper and helped alike.

Dear WordPress Gurus:

Every time I go to upgrade WordPress and am following the instructions on this page, I wish they were more clearly written and more sequential in their steps. One thing that always scares the tar out of me is the backwards nature of the instructions beginning at Step 3. It’s only until after those instructions are given (and perhaps followed!) that the reader encounters two very important pieces of information:

NOTE The wp-content folder requires special handling, as do the plugins and themes folders. You must copy over the contents of these folders, not the entire folder. Copying the entire folder overwrites all your customizations and added content.

Also take care to preserve the content of the wp-config.php file in the root directory.

Ack!

So… I propose a rewrite, maybe something similar to what I’ve suggested below. If you use it, feel free to alter it in any way. Thanks!

==========

1. Get the latest WordPress. Either download and extract it to your computer or download it directly to the server.

As a reminder, to extract a tar.gz to a folder use this command, replacing (folder name) with the name of your folder: tar -xvzf latest.tar.gz -C ./(folder name)

2. Download a backup copy of the wp-config.php file in the root directory. This file contains current settings for your existing installation, e.g. database sign-in information. (See information below.)

3. Delete your old wp-includes and wp-admin directories.

4. The wp-content folder and its subfolders require special handling. You must copy over the contents of these folders, not the entire folder. Copying the entire folder overwrites all your customizations and added content. Follow these instructions:

• upload all of the files/folders in wp-content/plugins to the wp-content folder on your site, overwriting any existing files/folders
• upload all of the files/folders in wp-content/themes to the wp-content folder on your site, overwriting any existing files/folders
• upload any files in wp-content to the wp-content folder on your site, overwriting any existing files

5. Copy the remaining WordPress files and folders to your server, overwriting any existing files/folders. You may use FTP or shell commands to do so. Note that this means *all* the files, including all the files in the root directory as well. If you use the default or classic theme and have customized it, then you can skip that theme.

The wp-config.php file in the root directory contains current settings for your existing installation, e.g. database sign-in information. Occasionally new versions of WordPress adds statements to this file. (E.g. in version 2.5 the SECRET_KEY variable was added, see Extended upgrade instructions). Compare your existing file with the new installation file which is named wp-config-sample.php. Either transfer your settings to the sample-file and rename it to wp-config.php or copy the new statements from the sample file into your current file.

I missed out on the first Nintendo craze because I was a “tweener.” The Atari 2600 was my first video game in the early 80s, and then following that, I got into the Commodore 64 scene. I even took my Commodore with me to college, and that lasted me until 1990 when I purchased my first computer — a 486 running Windows 3.1 with 8 MB of RAM and a 40 MB hard drive. (I remember someone exclaiming, “Good grief! Why would anyone need such a powerful computer?” Ha!)

So I really didn’t know much about game consoles beyond the Atari. The whole Nintendo scene pretty much passed me by entirely… and then, in November, 2006, we purchased a Wii (just ahead of the craze), and so now I’m catching up with all the nostalgia surrounding Nintendo and their great lineup of characters.

This 1988 Inside Edition story is great stuff. Blahst from the pasht, mahn!

My blog is reaching its first birthday, so this seemed like a good time for a makeover. A new face and some new functionality (over there to the right).

Hope you like it!

I have a few DropBox invites to give away. Want one? Leave a comment.

So with all of these summer projects, I’ve been digging up plenty of detritus from the back yard. It’s never once occurred to me that any of it might be of interest to the world at large. What incredible discovery, I wonder, have I let slip through my fingers, cast aside as nothing more than common clay clods, forever lost to posterity and to humanity? Alas, alack.

There’s an internet legend that’s told of Scott Williams of Newport, Rhode Island, who dutifully submits his paleontological discoveries to the Smithsonian Institute. Although the story is evidently fiction, it’s still pretty funny. Here’s the supposed response he received from the Smithsonian in 1994:

Paleoanthropology Division
Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled
"211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid
skull." We have given this specimen a careful and detailed
examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your
theory that it represents "conclusive proof of the presence of
Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago." Rather, it
appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of
the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to
be the "Malibu Barbie". It is evident that you have given a great
deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be
quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior
work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your
findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical
attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to
its modern origin:

1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains
are typically fossilized bone.

2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic
centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest
identified proto-hominids.

3. The dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more
consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the
"ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams" you speculate roamed the
wetlands during that time. This latter finding is certainly one
of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your
history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh
rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail,
let us say that:

A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that has
been chewed on by a dog

B. Clams don't have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your
request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due
to the heavy load our lab must bear in it's normal operation, and
partly due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of
recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie
dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely
to produce wildly inaccurate results. Sadly, we must also deny
your request that we approach the National Science Foundation's
Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen
the scientific name "Australopithecus spiff-arino." Speaking
personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of
your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the
species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound
like it might be Latin.

However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this
fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a
hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example
of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so
effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a
special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens
you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire
staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your
digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard. We
eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you
proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the
Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing
you expand on your theories surrounding the "trans-positating
fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix" that makes
the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently
discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears
Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,

Harvey Rowe
Curator, Antiquities

The little kid in me who built pinball machines out of plywood and nails and who took clocks apart to see what made them work… that little kid found something very cool today.

Here’s the software:

http://phun.cs.umu.se/wiki/Download

… that will let you do this stuff on your computer:

(Note that there are a bunch of related videos on the above YouTube page.)