The latest and greatest version of Firefox is now available. There are a lot of new features and fixes in this release, including HTML 5 support, the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, Private Browsing, and lots more.
Both CoLT and Googlebar Lite are compatible with the new release, so make sure you’re up to date with both.
I’ve bitten the proverbial bullet and joined twitter. You can follow me (if you’re so inclined) at my oh-so-clever username: jonahbishop. I’ll be using the service for small things that aren’t quite worth a blog post (it will not take the place of this site). We’ll see how it goes over time.
Frustratingly enough, when I signed up for twitter, the site was having major problems. Thankfully, things seem to be back to normal now. I’ve noticed a strange thing with the service, however. After climbing into the twitter pool, I noticed a number of leeches attaching themselves to my account. In other words, a number of random people started following me for no apparent reason (I recognize none of them). Does anyone else here who uses twitter see the same thing? Is there a way to stop it? Are these people simply spammers out to get “trackback” style web-cred?
Earlier this month, my parents and I went down to Georgia to visit with my grandmother. I took my camera along and this album is the result.
On a semi-related note, I’ve made some minor changes to the look and feel of the page navigation elements in Monkey Album. You may need to do a hard refresh in your browser to pick up the newer style sheet. As always, let me know of any problems you may run across.
The 30th annual Festival for the Eno is coming up next weekend, July 3-5. If you’re in the Triangle area in North Carolina, be sure to check it out. Tickets are $15 at the gate, and most (if not all) of the money goes to conserving the Eno River. The event is “trash free” (over 90% of trash is either recycled or composted) and a great way to spend a day. Over 80 musical and dance groups will be performing on 4 stages during the 3 days. Add to this great food, art vendors, and the beautiful West Point on the Eno setting, and you have a recipe for a great time.
I’ll most likely be out there on Friday; if you see me, be sure to say hello!
Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about backup strategies for my data. I’m bad about not backing things up on a regular basis, and I’m hoping to change that. There are a number of routes one can take, and I’ve been looking at several.
The easiest solution is to backup data onto removable media (CD, DVD, or an external hard drive). This method is cheapest, but it also has some serious drawbacks. CDs and DVDs have relatively small data footprints, which means you have to use many discs to backup sizable data stores. Writable discs also don’t last forever. The most serious flaw with this strategy, however, is that the backups are not off site. If someone breaks in and steals my computer, they are almost certain to also take the external hard drive sitting next to it. The same can be said for a fire; if the machine burns, so does the hard drive.
A number of online services are available for doing data backup. Carbonite and Mozy are two of the bigger ones I’ve heard about. These services give you off site backups, but they too have drawbacks. Often, these services have software that runs all the time on your machine, incrementally backing up as you go (which may be something you don’t want). In some cases, you also have limited control over exactly what gets backed up. The services cost money, and you’re giving your data to a third party. And, with lousy broadband in the US, initial upload times for large data can be painfully slow.
What does everyone here do to backup their data? Can anyone recommend a service or strategy that works well for them?
With any luck, this website has been restored to a pristine state. Here’s what happened:
As I have mentioned before, I use the Subversion update process to keep my WordPress installs up to date. WordPress 2.8 was recently released, so I set out to update my sites, starting with this one. Unfortunately, the update failed for reasons I still don’t understand. Switching to 2.8 with Subversion appeared to go successfully, and the site looked alright after updating, but the admin panel was completely unusable. I tried a number of workarounds, none of which worked. I ultimately rolled back to 2.7.1, but noted that WordPress wanted me to ‘upgrade’ my database again. Given that I don’t know what goes on during this process, and seeing as I was actually ‘downgrading’, I wasn’t sure what state the database was left in. I tried upgrading a second time with no luck, and rolled back yet again.
I was able to successfully update a few other websites that I run on WordPress, so the problem was clearly with this particular domain. As an ultimate fix, I created a brand new database, installed a brand new copy of WordPress 2.8, and imported all of my old data. I had to do some database massaging to get things back to their desired state (official comments weren’t marked, for example), but things should hopefully be back to normal.
This entire process has yielded a few overall site improvements:
See something that’s broken? Let me know! It’s my hope that everything is operating as it once did. I know that my contact form works, as I tested it earlier this evening. It’s my hope that this problem doesn’t crop up again. Let this be a lesson; back up your website early and often! I’m glad I did.
Year of the Code Monkey has been destroyed. I am working feverishly to restore it. Please bear with me during this highly annoying process. I hope to be back up within the next few days.
If you use WordPress, I advise against upgrading to version 2.8. I attempted to do so to this site this evening (via Subversion), and everything appeared to go smoothly. Unfortunately, upon logging in to my admin panel, I noted that everything was broken. The external site still performed as expected, but I couldn’t get around in the admin area.
Zero steps forward, twenty steps back.
Maybe others will have better luck than I did. I have since reverted back to 2.7.1 for the time being, though my database may now be corrupt. If you notice anything funky around this site, please, please, please let me know.
A recent trend among websites for games that have a “M for Mature” (or similar) rating is the use of age gates. These gates require the user to enter their birth date before they can view information on the subject in question. Usually, the user is presented with three pull down menus: one for the month, one for the day, and one for the year. From a legal perspective, I can understand why companies want to use this feature. But who are these gates really keeping out? Every kid should know that by providing an old enough date, they can gain access to the site. After all, this isn’t rocket science.
Every time I visit a website with one of these gates, I enter the most ridiculous date possible by selecting the oldest year offered (usually 1900). Maybe if enough people enter ridiculous dates every time, this annoying website ‘feature’ will go away.
Way back when I signed up for Netflix, I added a bunch of movies I had never seen to my queue. Several of these movies fall into what I call my “list of shame” (I’m borrowing the term from Dan Trachtenberg of the The Totally Rad Show). These are movies that everyone but me had already seen, and are fairly seminal. Yesterday, Dustin and I were discussing what qualifies a movie for the “list of shame” and I’m not sure I have a steadfast rule. For the most part, it’s a movie that, if I told most anyone I hadn’t seen it, they would say incredulously, “You haven’t seen that?!?”
Anyways, I thought it would be fun to share a few movies from my list, along with the rating I ultimately gave it at Netflix (using their 5 star rating scheme):
For the most part, I really enjoyed every movie on this list. And I can now say “yes, I’ve seen that” when asked by someone about these movies. There are still a few upcoming movies on my queue that fit this bill (including Citizen Kane, The Godfather: Part III, and Blazing Saddles). Do you have movies on your “list of shame?” If so, what are they?
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