A Singer, A Song

This. Is. Fabulous.

It may not be quite as good as David Foster’s version, but this one’s mine to share. A little winter wind and musical mystery for you to add to your Christmas collection.

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!

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.

Attention all parents of young boys: I just found all 52 episodes — the entire opus — of Speed Racer online at hulu.com. I suggest, before visiting the link, you first go out and stock up on a good supply of your favorite Saturday-morning kids’ cereal (maybe some Count Chocula, a few Crunchberries, a big bowl of Honeycomb, or maybe this offensive concoction) before parking your kids in front of the screen for hours at a time.

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.

Every once in a while a hit pops up on my StatCounter indicating that someone is trying to locate the notes from my doctoral study at Indiana University. I had those notes posted on an old website, so I’m re-posting them here in the hope that they help my budding fellow scholars with their academic pursuits.

http://www.drslewis.org/grant/doctoral-study-notes/

Tags: baroque music history, classical music history, doctoral study notes, E695, Indiana University, italian study notes, M100, M150, M541, M542, M653, M654, M655, M656, M685, M686, M687, M688, music history, romantic music history, twentieth century music history, vocal annotated bibliography, vocal pedagogy

I mean, we all understand that we’re captive to the human condition, correct? Every one of us has at one time or another stunk, sweat, burped, dripped, wiped, scratched, or picked, so we buy things to preserve our position in the animal kingdom. We fight back entropy by covering up our blemishes, fleshing out our wrinkles, whitening our smiles, making ourselves slightly more fragrant or slightly less hairy.

So there’s really no need for any of us to get the giggles when I tell you about…

THIS.

I’m tellin’ you: it’s the most amazing thing since the Oral B electric toothbrush my wife and I bought a couple of years ago. I’m not going to go into detail. I’m not going to describe all of the salves and creams and potions and gadgets we’ve tried that don’t work. All I’m going to say is that if you like to wear sandals in the summer, this is the best $10 you can spend at your local Target to make sure that you have presentable tootsies.

Help make the world a nicer place, and at the same time, stop scaring (and scarring) the person you sleep next to. It’s a win-win proposition.

And all with a little gizmo that’s really nothing more than a cheese grater for your feet.

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

Filedropper.com is offering 250 Gb of online storage for free — for life — if you sign up by May 15.