Tag Archives: website

"Roll Your Own", General, Hollywood, Uncategorized

Fun With Fonts

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Like 20 thousand other Lifehacker readers, I picked up on this post a couple days ago that mentioned a website where you could generate your own hand-written fonts FOR FREE.  It took about 2 and a half days for the traffic to settle down, but early this morning, I was able to get in there and scan in a few different “Bocko” fonts.  The timing on the post was funny, because I had asked Michelle just a day or two before if she knew how to design one’s own font; I have a couple projects on which I’d like to use my own digital handwriting…

Anyway, I was really impressed with how they turned out.  I even changed a few default fonts on my system to use my new handwritten ones instead; we’ll see how long that lasts before it gets too annoying for words (I have a feeling that the first time someone else comes over to the house and sits down at the computer, we’ll need to switch back to something else.  But I can read these JUST fine…).

On the geeky-website-news front, I was excited to see that there should be a bug-fixing version of WordPress due out soon.  I took a look at the list of tickets that have been closed on version 2.7.1, and it seems like a couple of my plugin problems might get fixed.  I’m anxious because there are a couple new features in the next version I’d like to be able to implement here on the site.  I don’t think I’m going to bother testing the beta, but as soon as there is an official x.x.1 release, I’ll be on it.

On the geeky-television-news front, Jen figures that Sylar’s dad is invisible.  In more ways than one, Jen, in more ways than one…

On the sisters’-bithdays front, Christy is 26 today!!  I talked to her yesterday and mentioned that it’s time to start that next quarter-century– no lookin back now; next stop: 30!  Happy b-day, Kid.

Time to head out to work– have a fabulous Wednesday.

Twitter, Uncategorized

We'll Give It Another Shot

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I tried Twitter very briefly for a couple days back in May.  It was of virtually absolutely no use to me.  Part of it was, “why the hell would I blog fewer than 140 characters?” and another part was, “If I spend all my time telling people what I’m doing, I won’t get anything done,” and still another part was, “I don’t have all these text messages to burn…”

There are a few changes that have occurred since that caused me to reconsider.  Here in the present, I have a lot more texts at my disposal per month; I’ve switched to a more text-happy plan and can afford to “waste” them on dumb stuff like twitter.  Second, I found a nice Twitter plugin for WordPress, so I don’t have to tell anyone, “hey, go to this other page to find more updates from me,” instead they will all just be aggregated here and posted on a daily basis.  Finally, as I prepare for my annual trek to the Northwoods for the hunt, it dawned on me that I can relay texts from my phone much faster than taking the time to dial up to the web @ Mom and Dad’s, wait for my page to load, write a post, etc., etc…. I think you get it.

Anyway, be on the lookout for the ‘tweets,’ at least while I’m in E.R., and if I suddenly find Twitter to be worthwhile, then hey– I guess I’ll need to upgrade my messaging plan again.

Climate, General, Sports, Uncategorized

A Potpourri of Catching Up

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Just being out of commission for a day can set you back a little bit.  I had 36 new articles come through my New Scientist feed this morning…

In the category of “It’s Always Something,” we have: Flatscreen TVs turn up the heat on climate, showing once again that we can ALWAYS find a way to destroy the planet.  Is the Earth this fragile, or are we this big?

At this point, the celebrity (or quasi-celebrity) who I idolize the most is definitely John Hodgman.  He exudes an ideal combination of hilarious and intelligent.  If I could be this funny, I wouldn’t really need to worry about anything else.  His second book is a great gift idea for Jason, by the way…

Oh, and in case you hadn’t noticed (and I barely have), the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team has committed to showing up for at least 82 more games, and their season begins tonight.  I have entered basketball seasons with no hope for the Bucks in the past, but this is the first time since I took an interest in the NBA in the late 80s that I start a season with neither hope or interest.  Well, maybe that’s not 100% true– I must be at least vaguely interested, or you wouldn’t be reading these words.  However, I’m not as interested in following the fortunes of the team as I am the story of their inevitable collapse.  I pity the Tom Enlunds and Michael Hunts of the world, who make a living writing about this team.  It can’t be a very good living…

Oh, and you may have noticed a significant uptick in the size of the ‘archives’ available on the site– my sick day was good for researching and solving the problem I’d had with importing data from the old tikiwiki blog.  So if you care to relive the days when my words were much prettier, stop by 2003 or so.

That is all, carry on.

General, Uncategorized

Slower Than Expected

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Howdy.  I stayed home sick today, so pardon me for being brief.

Michelle and I went the Halloween shindig @ the Price house in Hartford on Saturday– it was a good time, and there is photographic evidence in the DaytoDay gallery.  We also made a “homemade” pizza on Sunday, and there are a couple pics of that, too.  It turned out really well.

But anyway, I wanted to get those photos posted about 4 hours ago, but it took me this long to:

  1. learn that some extensions for PHP hadn’t been enabled on the new server,
  2. figure out that some of the plugins here rely on the extensions in question,
  3. find out what to do to enable those extensions,
  4. figure out that the reason I couldn’t get them all enabled was because I needed to install extra packages from the Slackware install disc,
  5. backup the base ( / ) directory on the server,
  6. install the needed packages, and
  7. finally upload the pictures that I wanted.

I think I’ll take a nap for a while now.

General, Uncategorized

Well, Let's Try That Again

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Like I said the other day, I’ve got a handful of new pictures that I’m putting up.  I noticed today that I forgot to “re-size” them, so they were taking an agonizingly long time to load (a 2-meg photo will do that on a residential connection).  They’re fixed now, so if you tried earlier to look and ended up closing your browser in frustration mumbling, “goddammit Bocko…” you can go back now and enjoy.

Also, I could go for a sandwich.

"Roll Your Own", Uncategorized

Working On a Coupla TwoThree Things

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I had a breakthrough yesterday in realizing that I was sending posts via email is not that difficult.  I was just not completing the process.  I can now pull in those emails pretty quickly.

The ones that I’ve grabbed, though, don’t seem to display correctly once they’re here.  I get titles that reflect the subject line, but the body itself is always empty.  I’m going to head out to the forums next to take a look at that.

Why I am blogging at 12:40am, you ask?  Just couldn’t get to sleep.  I was lying awake in bed about an hour before I decided that I would grab the laptop and see if that would make me tired.  It only seems to have made me thirsty, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.

General, Uncategorized

Additionally:

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Uploaded some more photos today.  I now have a galleries for Oshkosh, Eagle River, and Milwaukee, as well as for a few of the vacations I’ve taken in the last few years.  Take a look as you will.

Michelle and I were talking about it recently– I don’t think I ever actually put photos from our Glacier Nat’l Park trip on the web last summer.  I’m gonna work on those next, be watching for it in a few days…

In other breaking news this evening, I guess Tom Crean is leaving Marquette.  How bout them apples?

"Roll Your Own", General, Uncategorized

Speed Bump

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I thought that there may be some issues within this new site that really made it slow for some people.  But, after noticing the poor transfer rate I get from connecting to my house in a variety of ways, I decided a speed test for my Internet connection was in order.  The verdict: 25 Kbps upstream.  Ouch.

So when I get home later on, I’m going to reboot the modem (I don’t think I’ve had to do that at all since they hooked up the webs for me early last fall), and if that changes nothing (I don’t think it will), it’ll be time for a phone call to my friendly neighborhood Time Warner Customer Service rep.  Gotta hold off for the weekend on that one, because I’ve never experienced a hold time in this market (MKE) of less than 20 minutes.

"Roll Your Own", General, Uncategorized

That Was Unexpected

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Well, maybe I shouldn’t even admit this, but I got into work this morning, and all of a sudden, soloshootsfirst.com was pointing at my new WordPress site. Wasn’t doing that night when I went to bed. Is now. *shrug*

So, err, welcome to the new version of the site. Yep.

……

Update your feeds.

**UPDATE**   Talked to Joe and learned something new about Apache and needing to restart it– which I had to do this morning for a completely different reason.  But at least I feel better about not being a total schmoe.  Carry on!

"Roll Your Own", Uncategorized

The Clock Is Running…

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Very close to debuting the new site to the general public.  I started messing around w/ the Apache .conf file to update the locations of my virtual servers, but the behavior wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.  I’m still thinking it through, and I’m sure it’ll be figured out (with some help from Mundschau, no doubt).

I actually really messed it up when I thought I had the simple file updating done– fortunately, I wasn’t the first to so dick-up my wordpress site, and a much smarter person created a convenient solution.