Protected entry: More Details; or, “Passwords? WHY?”

This entry is protected. If you would like access to this and other protected entries, email Sara for the password.

Coming soon to a blog near you: protected entries

For various reasons, I’m going to start posting the occasional entry behind a password. I will post more in-depth information on why I’m doing that in a few minutes - and in order to read that post, you’ll have to, amazingly enough, use a password.

So, even though this is a pain in the rear, if you would like that password then please contact me. Email, phone, text, facebook, instant message, whatever. Once you acquire that lovely password, you’re good to go - I’m not going to change it, like, ever. Send it to your brother’s neighbour’s dog’s best friend, if you think he’d be interested in reading the entries too: I’m less concerned with the password’s super-strength as with the fact that it simply exists.

That’s all. Carry on.

An update on updates

It’s great having internet access. All those things I told myself I’d take care of…eventually… can finally be marked off my list.

One thing I’ve been meaning to do has been to increase the exposure new updates got within the site itself, especially after “batch” updates of two or three blog posts and a pile of photos. Following RSS feeds remains, of course, the best and easiest way to find updates — but not everyone is using a feed reader (Hi, mom!). In that case, finding new things could be “somehow” difficult.

To address that, I revamped the front page to simply pull content directly from said feeds. Yay, technology! Now my great multitude of beloved readers (again, Hi mom!) have yet another way in which to stay on top of things.

In other news; school officially “opened” yesterday, which means that students have started arriving on campus. The next week or so will have little activity for me to participate in, as more students arrive - and those that are here keep busy with groundskeeping. With any luck, there will be a Faculty/Staff meeting before the end of this week. Hopefully then I will learn more about the upcoming term’s schedule and classes. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Useful Linkspam

Because I’m taking my laptop with me to Ghana, I’ve been a bit obsessive lately about optimal performance on everything related to my computer use. I don’t know how often I’ll be using my laptop, and I’m not sure about the access I’ll have to electricity. So from endlessly tweaking the blog here to decreasing boot times to scripting things that will be done most often (copying & organizing photos, for example) - my goal is to get everything as quick, painless, and least-power-consumptive as possible.

With that in mind, the following link is seriously awesome:
http://www.lesswatts.org
Software: PowerTOP. [Linux only.]
I’ve been having trouble identifying what processes, exactly, are eating away at my battery life. Aside from knowing my graphics processing is (intentionally) FUBAR’d when I’m running Compiz, I wasn’t sure what was going on behind the scenes that could affect power consumption. I haven’t spent much time on this little utility yet, but from what I’ve read it has the potential to be my next best friend. I thought I’d share it with the few of you who have laptops running Linux 2.6.21+ kernels on Intel chipsets (that’s not really a specialized demographic at all, right?!).

Officially “one of the crowd”

I was out of town this weekend (which will be discussed in a future entry); sometime while I was gone Whimsi was listed on the Worldwide Peace Corps Blog Directory. Wow, I’m famous. Apparently, I got more hits since Saturday than I did since the first of the year (a pretty pathetic revelation, actually).

In any case, I added “Contact” and “About” pages to make life slightly easier on anyone who stops by. I know my biggest gripe as a desperate nominee, when I first started using that blog directory for info scavenging, was a lack of basic information. So there you go.

Welcome to any “desperate nominees” passing through. Good luck.

Need bandwidth?

From the department of “dude, seriously?!” - I am six short weeks from an anniversary with my current webhost, meaning another iteration of my yearly billing cycle.

So… anyone looking for cheap hosting? Because if you already were, you might be able to help Whimsi out.

• 1. I can may lease subdomain hosting on a yearly basis. If I decide to do so, approval would be subject to my analysis of your character; mi TOS es su TOS.
• 2. Alternatively, if you’re in the market for fo-reals hosting, consider signing up at Dreamhost with a referral code. You get 50% off any plan (even monthly… hint, nudge), I get $48 bucks.
  >>If you click here, enter WHIMSIDISCOUNT as your promo code. Simple. Done. Yay.

Also, I will likely post something similar on trueplaces, facebook, etc. - don’t let the spam piss you off. I’m not a bad person. Really.

Now you see them…

…now you don’t.

So two meager posts were lost due to my laziness in database migration. Did you notice care? Ok then.

The database(s) marked the last cobwebs to be cleaned out of the old space before cancelling hosting — so with any luck, here’s to another year of non-moving.

In other news, two new guys have started on at work. After constituting 50% of the student workforce for a while, this is very strange.

Hi, new guys.

Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome - C’mon in.

Happy, joy. You’ve arrived. Stick around. Enjoy the view.

The new, permanent feed, in case you missed it:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/whimsi
[http://whimsicorical.com/whimsi/?feed=rss]
/?feed=rss2
/?feed=atom
/?feed=rdf

Choose your poison: Ta.

Out on a Whim

Ar har, ar hardy har. I cracketh me up. Whatever.

But anyhow. This apparent whim I’m going out on is coming soon — when I plan on migrating this decrepit piece of somethingorother from MoveableType to Wordpress. Ok, really, I get that it won’t affect anyone else, but it’s been making the geek in me happy for the past few evenings.

So just in case you decide to ever make use of your domain (yes I’m talking to YOU, Mr. “Oh, I’ll just put my diggs and kiss up to google and a cute little ‘under construction’ sign that is so 1996″) - here’s why I’m switching. Oh, and in case anyone else is interested, you should listen up too:

SIX APART SUCKS.

Got that? Just about sums everything up.

See, I was all about propping 6a ‘back in the day’ (ok, like two years ago) - they never were “really” free, but they were good enough for the little guy/gal. Then they married Typepad. Then they had kids. Then they forgot about us. But we kept hanging around, because every Christmas and Birthday they still sent us cards, so they still loved us, right? But then… MT3.0 came out, with its godawful licensing shite. Then we freeloaders cried. But I stayed - ’cause hey: one author, one site, one post a month - it’s not like I had big requirements.

But now the ‘principle of the matter’ finally returns to kick me in the pants, because I have sudden need of multiple databases, multiple authors, and actual plugin support - and I really don’t care to spend $400 for the privilege.

So screw you, Six Apart. I tried to pretend you were worth supporting, just because you’d been the “better guys” for so long. Now that I poke around with the “other guys”… holy fitshuck, batman: y’all suck.