Kansieo.com

That Darn Caffeinated Content Update!

Friday, January 2, 2009

Finally, it’s here! There are a couple of major issues that this update will fix, including the recent issue of articles not being posted with titles (as a Christmas gift, articlesbase.com changed their return html…thanks ArticlesBase! ;). Images weren’t being
posted properly in WP27 - fixed. First few characters of text files being cut off - fixed. Intermittant connection issues - fixed. Bunch of other things - fixed.

Also, if you were one of the unlucky ones to see Caffeinated Content appear to work and then get hit with an empty blog, I’ve figured it out… unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do from Caffeinated Content’s end to fix it at this point. It’s a problem with MySQL/WordPress–see http://robsnotebook.com/wordpress-mysql-gone-away for details and fixes. I’ll see if there is any possibility for including some sort of fix on my end, but I doubt it. As a side note, this fix will also apply to those having problems selecting categories.

Anyway, because of the amount of material in this update, it has NOT been properly tested, but I wanted to get it out as soon as possible. It’ll most likely work with all versions of WordPress 2.3 and beyond. It should be considered a beta, but necessary update. If there are any problems, shoot me an email at kansieo (at) gmail (dot) com.

This update will be available for download at the kansieo.com members area or via a E-junkie download link that’ll be sent out shortly.

Now…speaking of problems… My support desk is messed up. I’m going to try to get it back into shape tomorrow, but if not I’ll be auditioning new software… if you have suggestions, let me know.

Oh, and yes, I do realize this is an almost direct copy of my newsletter mailing, thanks for noticing.

Busy busy busy….weekends are now shot through the holiday season.

Monday, November 24, 2008

My mother is visiting from Wisconsin this coming weekend so we’ve been busting our tushes trying to make things presentable for her. After the baby was born, all of the spare time that used to be there is out the window…at least he’s got an excellent temperment so it could be worse.

Anyway, I’m working on the support tickets that came in over the weekend now. However, chances are that the rest of the winter weekend support will be slow.

I do my best to balance family life and Caffeinated life, but when it comes down to the wire, the family will always come first!

Ps: if this post looks like crap, it’s because I’m posting via BlackBerry, unfortunately not the new BB Storm!

Filed in Caffeinated Content, My Stuff | Tagged Caffeinated Content, update | Comments (0)

Jason got run over by a limo…

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Apparently I’m accident prone.

Just ran out of the office to get a bite to eat. Innocent, yes…this time!

The limo was trying to make a turn into the wall of tourists crossing the street and I just happened to be at the end of a good portion of them. Luckily, I walk fast and he was going slow, so I was just brushed by his front bumper, and his tire grazed my heel, taking off my shoe and leaving a black streak down my jeans.

He stopped the car, rolled down the window and said, “Sorry man, I didn’t see you there.” Sauntering up to his window, shoe in hand, I said, “Dude, I’m wearing a bright red jacket…” I took his plate number but since nothing is bleeding or broken so I probably not going to report him…but tomorrow I’m locking myself in the house in front of the computer!

Filed in My Stuff, Rants | Tagged Stupid driver, You owe me a pair of jeans! | Comments (4)

Holiday decorating stinks!

Monday, November 17, 2008

Yesterday, I got out the lights, ladder and staple gun with intentions of decorating the porch for the holiday season.

Sounds like a good idea right? Well, it was supposed to be.

I got the ladder set up, picked up a set of lights, grabbed the staple gun…and shot myself right in the finger. No idea how–it was a mechanical stapler that requires a fairly hard pull on the trigger to go off. Regardless, I had a staple effectively stapling my skin to my finger bone…it’d probably be cool if it didn’t happen to me, or if it was two weeks ago during Halloween.

Tried pulling it out with my fingers with no luck, got a flat screwdriver with the intention of prying it out, but had no leverage. Finally, I was able to maneuver a pair of pliers enough to pull it out…amazing how well the thing was stuck. I cleaned it up as best as I could, wrapped my finger in gauze and tape, and put up about 9,000,000 feet of lights and other decorations.

Pain meter: No cursing, so it didn’t hurt all that bad.

Filed in My Stuff | Tagged staple this, thanks--I'd lose it otherwise | Comments (0)

WordPress 2.7 beta testing

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been playing with the latest beta of WordPress 2.7. It’s got a few cool enhancements (the new dashboard slick, as are the enhancements to the plugin interface).

The only downfall so far is that it seems to be extremely slow…

Either way, Caffeinated Content still works perfectly.

Filed in Caffeinated Content, My Stuff | Tagged 2.7, Caffeinated Content, Wordpress | Comments (0)

Jury Duty - Woohoo.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Might be slow on emails today…doing my civic duty and reporting for jury duty. I’ll probably spend most of the day waiting. And waiting. And waiting. But it’s reported that the courthouse juror waiting rooms have wifi, so I’ll certainly be bringing the laptop along.

We’ll see, I guess.

Update (10/30/2008): Two days waiting and then selected to be on a jury, so I have to report back again on Monday morning. I’m sure the first half of next week, at the least, is shot. Kew Gardens Courthouse guest wifi sucks–50% of the websites I tried to visit are blocked, including Youtube, so no development was done in that regard. But at least they have wifi!

Update 2 (11/06/2008): Finally done with jury duty. Real life can now resume!

Filed in My Stuff | Tagged civic duty, jury duty | Comments (0)

More server downtime…coming server migration.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Some of you may have noticed a bit of downtime today. Should be all fixed now!

On a side note, in the coming days, I’ll be migrating to a new server to make room for expansion. Most things will occur seamlessly as the DNS servers resolve, but one or two services might take a little longer.

Filed in Our Stuff | | Comments (0)

October 15, 2008 - MacBook Pro unboxing and impressions

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Today, I went to the Apple Store to grab the latest and greatest from Steve Jobs–the 15-inch LED-backlit widescreen notebook known as the MacBook Pro. Normally, I’m a Windows guy, but have a machine in the office running linux and basically holding all of my media. Basically, I’m equal opportunity when it comes to computing.

First, let me tell you why I got a MacBook Pro, and why I was the first on the block to get the newest (shipped yesterday, in stores today–they didn’t even have them out when I arrived, I had to beg!). Previously, I had always put together my own machines (with the exception of a laptop here and there–latest being an Asus EeePC which is awesome in it’s own right, but way too small for PHP development). Today, something changed. I wanted something that just worked, worked well, and could do everything I threw at it and more. Enough of those chincy Vista crap outs (got rid of Vista, all my Windows PCs run XP at this point), and frankly, enough tweaking and modifying my linux installs to get it to play nice with everything else. So I should have gotten a MacBook? Nah…with the Pro, I’ll have the extra firepower to play some Windows games with it’s built in GeForce 9600 (or save battery life with the integrated 9400M–cool beans).

Anyway. Here’s my unboxing (click the pics for a bigger view):

Here is the spiffy new box. Notice how small it is compared to previous packaging.

MacBook Pro - The box has opened!

Apple has wasted no space in their package.

Discarded that laptop for the other stuff in the box...

The lightbulb went out during these pictures so I changed it...and found a Nerf dart up there. Cool.

Magsafe, ethernet, Firewire 800, two USB, mini DisplayPort, audio in and out, and an ExpressCard slot along with the battery meter.

Just a slot-loading superdrive on this side.

Nothing of interest here...except...

What does this little latch do?

Ohh, mysterious dark spaces...

Hey it's a battery!

And the hard drive! Why hello there.

I had a little trouble at this point getting the cover back on. It seems the little tabs on the cover don’t have anything on the case to align with, therefore you just have to get lucky! Could be a problem for someone changing a battery often…

Holy Glossy Screen! Yes, that's me being self-aware.

If you look closely, it’s glossy enough to see the unfinished paint job on the wall behind me–how embarrassing.

Nice backlit keyboard, huge multi-touch trackpad. Micro perf speakers on both sides of the keyboard and power button on the top right.

The MagSafe power adapter...cool little innovation.

Feel the power!

And it begins...

A New MacBook Pro...

Some specs...

So there you have it. The new MacBook Pro 15″ unboxed, up and running. It’ll take some time for me to get into the general workings of a new operating system (I haven’t used MacOS since…oh…1995), but I’ll be sure to post more impressions of it after I do! Of course, I’ve written this entire post on the thing, including the picture uploads, so I’m going full force.

A couple things I’ve noticed while taking pictures. As I said above, the LCD is highly glossy. I’m interested in seeing how well it’ll handle outdoors use. There are a few extremely minor flaws in the anodization…nothing I’m going to worry about. Also, FireFox has crashed three times during this posting. Maybe I’ll try Safari next time.

Next up, installing my development environment so I can get some productivity going on…I’ll probably start with a nice simple XAMPP install, but we’ll see. Anyone know of a good Mac PHP/text editor?

Update: The strange black thing? It looks like an Apple-branded napkin. Maybe it’s a mousepad. Or a microfiber cleaning cloth for this insanely glossy screen. Yeah, that’s it.

Update 2: Added a couple of notes.

Filed in Computers, My Stuff | Tagged cool, For me!, he did what?, macbook pro | Comments (5)

An un-fun weekend. Blech!

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

So last weekend was supposed to be a nice calm family weekend. Do a little house cleaning, visit the little weekend festival at the church, have Ethan out and about playing with the neighborhood kids…nice simple stuff.

Not to be so! Saturday was a slow day, though I was on baby duty because my wife came down with a nasty cold courtesy of Ethan. Sunday morning, Anne Marie was about to leave for her mother’s house when she discovered that someone had gotten into our car sometime during the night and took our GPS and Sirius radio. Thankfully they didn’t break the window or door, but it goes to show how easily a crackhead can get into a car (shouldn’t be surprised, I used to do it as a daily routine when half of the door internals rusted out on my first vehicle, an ‘86 Toyota pickup. Yes, using a coathanger to open your car door while at the mall gets you quite a few accusing stares…). Definitely could have been worse!

So Monday, I came down with the cold, and was twice as bad yesterday, and just now clearing up today…going to start quarantining the kids when they get sick.

Oh well!

Filed in My Stuff | Tagged 86 toyota pickup, coathangers, colds | Comments (0)

Brraaaaaains! Hah, this guy is awesome.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Everyone’s favorite online geek toy store, thinkgeek.com, has this guy just in time for Halloween.

From thinkgeek.com:

“Cuddle-Up with the Un-Dead

What happens when you take old broken plush toys and bury them in the woods by the light of the full moon while whistling the theme song from “Halloween”? Unfortunately nothing… which is why the skillful design monkeys here at ThinkGeek were forced to come-up with our own scary (but cute) zombie plush.

The Dismember-Me Plush Zombie begs to be torn limb from limb. After all he is a decaying re-animated corpse turned into irresistible cuddly plush. Rip off an arm… he doesn’t mind. Tear him in half.. he’ll barely notice. Pull off his legs… ok now he’s getting a bit annoyed. Steal his brain… now you’ve really done it. Keep your teddy bears under close guard tonight because undead plush have come back from hell to walk the earth.”

I ordered one for my desk, but I’m willing to bet my son (or the dog) will steal him in short order… Hmm. Maybe I’ll get two just in case…

Filed in Fun Stuff | Tagged brains, cool, halloween, plush, thinkgeek.com, zombies | Comments (0)