All posts by archangel

About, Internet

Crack Team 2.5

The server migration is complete and I’ve added lots of cool stuff. While this isn’t as drastic a change as when I switched from Movable Type to WordPress, it’s the biggest change since then. Here’s what’s new:

WordPress 2.3.1
I was way behind, but now we’re on the cutting edge. The upgrade includes tagging and auto-save, among other things. It also has a better visual editor.

Tarski 2.01
The latest version of this theme, which includes a new header image that nicely demonstrates The Crack Team’s plans for world domination. Most other changes are invisible to users. Mainly it’s compliant with WP 2.3 and supports tags. Of note to bloggers is an option to reverse your page title, so the post title comes before your site name. That’s good for search engine optimization.

Subscribe To Comments
When you comment on a post, you can request to be notified by email of any follow-up comments.

Social Bookmarking
When you view a single post, you’ll now see a row of icons to bookmark that page to del.icio.us, Facebook, Google, etc. Let me know if one you use is missing.

Footnotes
On longer posts I love to use footnotes, so this is great for me. You just wrap the footnote in double parentheses. For example1. Just make sure there’s a space before the opening parentheses.

Contact Form
I added a simple contact form; you can see it at the end of my profile page. It uses both CAPTCHA and Askimet to prevent spam. I know CAPTCHA isn’t foolproof, but as far as I can tell Askimet is. It’s saved me from over 5,000 spam comments since I switched to WP. If any author wants, I’ll set up a form for them.

In addition to the software upgrades and plugins, Inmotion keeps separate server logs for each domain and subdomain I host, and separates out webmail. This means AWStats will report more accurately. Granted, I’m sure I won’t want to see them since they’re artificially inflated right now. But that which can be measured can be improved.

Hopefully all this is useful and not just a novelty. If you have any suggestions, just leave a comment. Thanks.

  1. Here’s a footnote [↩]
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About, Internet, Technology

Server Maintenance

Well, it’s more like server removal. I’m switching from a self-hosted server to one at Inmotion Hosting. It was fun while it lasted. Ok, so it wasn’t really fun, because I hate system administration. And that’s why I’m switching it out. Some things get worse when they’re out of my hands, but other things like regular backups, security and bug fix patches, etc. get way better.

They’ll be handling mail as well, and as a result I will be getting rid of my CrackTeam.org email address. I technically have 6 email addresses and by far the Crack Team one gets the most spam. Not that I see any of it – I have excellent spam filtering. It’s 97% accurate and has protected me from over 69,000 spam messages to date. I don’t know that Inmotion will be nearly as accurate though, since they use SpamAssassin, and I use the BayesSpam plugin for SquirrelMail. Anyway, I was worried about getting rid of it until I realized that almost none of my friends use that email; it’s mainly used to register for web sites. I can use my Yahoo account for that, since their spam filtering is excellent as well. If you were using my Crack Team email, please switch to one of my 3 main personal email addresses.

Anyhoo, the point is that the site will be going down, perhaps tonight, so don’t be surprised. Hopefully the whole thing won’t take long, and we’ll be running on WordPress 2.3.1. There should be some nice new features.

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Film

Star Trek Film Cast: Seriously?

6 Comments

I just read the cast listing of the new Star Trek film and my reaction was, “Holy shit. Really?” I knew it was a prequel directed by J.J. Abrams. I had no idea how much they were going to reinvent the show. Here’s the cast:

Bones will be played by Karl Urban. This is the first severe departure as Karl has mainly played big tough guys in Doom, Bourne Supremacy, The Chronicles of Riddick, Lord of the Rings, even Xena. When you think of Bones, you don’t actually picture a guy who could crush your bones:
Karl Urban as Bones

Sulu will be played by John Cho, aka Harold from Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. He’s also the guy who introduced us to the term MILF in American Pie. But I don’t think he’s responsible for MILF Hunter. Anyway, not too big of a stretch. The real disappointment is that H&K2 won’t take place in Amsterdam. Lame.

Spock will be played by Zachary Quinto, Sylar from Heroes. Sylar is pretty emotionless, so he’s got practice, but I won’t be able to stop wondering when he’ll bash an alien in the head and steal its powers.

Scotty will be played by Simon Pegg. You of course remember him as Shaun of the Dead, and the super cop from Hot Fuzz. (If you didn’t see it, BTW, Hot Fuzz was awesome.) My first ignorant thought was, “But he’s not Scottish!” Then I remembered James Doohan was Canadian and faked the accent. This is my favorite casting; Simon Pegg kicks ass.

Well, everyone else is an unknown, except for Eric Bana who plays Nero. I’m assuming that’s the bad guy. He’s probably an alien gambler who turns into an unstoppable green monster when he loses money. And it looks like Nimoy will make an appearance as Old Spock. But I’m rather concerned, because I think Shatner is practically irreplaceable. It just occurred to me that Kirk is about as hard to cast as Batman. And by that logic, Christian Bale is the only choice to play him. If you can make an awesome Batman (best ever!), you can make an awesome Kirk. I just wish Abrams had asked me before he picked some random dude.

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Humor, Television

Night Man vs. Day Man

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If you haven’t been watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, you’re really missing out. Here are a couple scenes from last week’s episode when the guys formed a band. Listen carefully to the lyrics. Warning: the lyrics and dialogue might not be safe for work.

Night Man

Here’s the follow-up song, Day Man:

Here’s a photo of the original lyrics to Night Man:

Night Man Lyrics

If you couldn’t understand the original, here’s a transcription:

Night Man Sneaky And Mean!
Thunder inside my dreams, I think I love you
You make me wanna cry, make me wanna die
I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you night man
Every night you come into my room and pin me down with your strong arms
And ya pin me down and I try to fight you
You come inside and you come inside me and fill me up.

Just two men sharing the night
It might seem wrong but its just right
Its just two men sharing each other
Its just two men like loving brothers
One on top and one on bottom
One inside and one is out
One is screaming he’s so happy
The other screams in a passionate shout
Its the night man
The feeling so wrong and right man
The feeling so wrong and right man
I cant fight you man when you come inside me
You pin me down with your strong hands
And i become the night
The passionate passionate night man

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Television

I Need More Yvonne Strahovski

10 Comments

So I’ve been watching the TV show Chuck [ Amazon ]. I do not, in any way, wish to raise your expectations of this show, which is executive produced by Ally McG. He’s the guy who brought us Charlie’s Angels and Charlie’s Angels 2: Please Make It Stop. Again, this is from a guy who insists on calling himself McG, and looks like [fratboy image removed], so I don’t think I’m stretching it by calling him a douchebag. Feel free to call me a hypocrite; just remember that I didn’t make Charlie’s Angels 2.

But the fact is, I find the show amusing. And I find myself wanting Yvonne Strahovski, like, crazy bad. It doesn’t hurt that they get her into a swimsuit or lingerie or a German barmaid outfit outfit every show, without fail. Sometimes all 3. And they make her wear the barmaid outfit while working at a hot dog place, so clearly their priorities are in the right place (hotness > logic).

Yvonne Strahovski

Unfortunately, the show’s been on a whole month and I still don’t see her in Maxim, FHM, Barely Legal, etc. So if you don’t mind, I need you to watch the show just to get the ratings up so she’s asked to do some hot pictorials so I can have a background for my Windows desktop. Again, the show is amusing, and it’s gotten better since McGonagall stopped directing it. And she is just so freakin’ adorable…

Yvonne Strahovski

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Internet, Technology

Personal Do Not Call List

I’ve joined a few different social networking sites, and when I join I want to quickly add my friends who are already on the site. Many have a nifty feature that allow you to upload your Outlook contacts file, which they use to generate a list of existing users. Sounds harmless, right?

The problem is that some sites can be a bit aggressive about it, and if you’re not careful, they will sent invites to your whole contacts list. We often forget who we have in that list. People we haven’t spoken to in years, or those who we had one short conversation with. In short, people who might be little taken aback to find you still had their contact info. And even more creeped out that you want to add them as “friends” on whatever social site du jour. I just installed the latest version of Skype, which includes your Outlook contacts in your Skype contact list by default (you can turn that off, thankfully). It would suck to accidentally call some girl whose phone number I should have purged years ago.

So I created a personal Do Not Call List. I moved every contact that I’d feel embarrassed about contacting accidentally. As I’m a bit of a data pack rat, I cleared out 37 (!) old contacts. I still have them just in case, but I can now export my current contacts without fear. It also makes finding contacts a bit easier.

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Everything Else

Seinfeld’s Productivity Booster

LifeHacker has an interesting story about how Jerry Seinfeld motivates himself to act daily. His advice is simple: get a yearly calendar that has a box for every day, and make a big red X with magic marker every day you make a positive step towards your goal.

“After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

“Don’t break the chain.” He said again for emphasis.

“But Archangel,” you say, “calendars are so expensive!” Well, I’ve got two solutions for you.

  1. Get a free printable calendar
  2. Get a virtual Seinfeldian chain calendar

If you’re looking into boosting productivity, I also recommend the time tracker.

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