2008-01-29
Posted in Site Updates
at 20:27
I’ve decided to break from the “one review and one non-review per day, alternating” pattern for the forseeable future. It’s making it difficult for me to get my coursework in on time.
As a result, you’ll probably see a lot more non-fanfiction posts and a lot fewer reviews. Sorry, but I’ve had problems with procrastination in the past and fanfiction is the worst catalyst I’ve encountered so far. On the plus side, I’ll post non-fanfic stuff as soon as I feel like it, so there’s no longer a practical limit to the number of posts I might make in a day.
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2007-12-31
Posted in Site Updates
at 22:26
Having discovered that my old host STILL hasn’t fixed their DNS problems, I’ve moved this blog to NearlyFreeSpeech.NET. Let me know if you find any problems.
However, keep in mind that the contact form is still on my old host (I need to make some changes before it will work with NearlyFreeSpeech.NET’s mailer) so it may exhibit the same intermittent 404 errors that forced me to move the blog. If you have trouble with it, try again later and it will work. I’ll have it moved over as soon as I’ve got the script updated.
UPDATE: The mail form is now hosted on the same server as the blog, so there should be no more intermittent 404 errors.
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Posted in Site Updates
at 18:41
Yes, I have added an adbox to my blog. For those who are wondering, no, I haven’t become a hypocrite. I still don’t like big banner and skyscraper ads all over, but I don’t mind a few small buttons… especially when the advertiser pays per day, rather than per impression or per click.
Pay-per-day ads like the ones I’m using allow people who aren’t interested (in most cases, that means me) to use tools like AdBlock Plus without hurting anyone (the only effect is a few less views on the graphs shown to potential advertisers) and, since it’s Project Wonderful ads, even I don’t block them. (The Project Wonderful guys run their ad service the way I would) It also helps that I’ve set my profile to refuse animated GIFs.
Anyway, I’ve set a minimum price per adbox of 1¢ per day and I’m providing two boxes. Hopefully, there will be enough interest that I won’t have to switch to one box at 2¢. My goal is to make this blog pay for itself when hosted on NearlyFreeSpeech.NET.
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2007-09-30
Posted in Site Updates
at 23:05
In case you were wondering, the lack of posts wasn’t because I’d abandoned this blog. It’s because my host’s PHP install is broken and the admin panel wouldn’t load.
I’ve finally managed to figure out how to work around that, so expect to see a large dump of new postings within the next week or two. 
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2007-02-20
Posted in Site Updates
at 4:18
Well, I’ve finally got my blog back up. It seems that there’s some kind of bug (impossible to trigger in the default configuration, I’d assume) in the newest version of PHP 5 which causes ./ and ../ includes to fail, and which doesn’t play nice with apache’s DirectoryIndex-based redirection. (the feature that lets www.foo.com load www.foo.com/index.html) WordPress makes use of such things in several important places.
I’ve managed to work around that by using symlinks for the ../ includes and by removing the ./ or ../ wherever I found it, but I don’t know what the security implications of such a change are and the post preview window doesn’t work correctly now.
Any input on the problem and what I did to work around it would be greatly appreciated. Also, if you find any features which are still broken, please let me know so I can add the workaround there too. Finally, if you know how to fix it properly, please let me know so I can forward your message to my webhost.
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2006-12-18
Posted in Geek Stuff, Site Updates
at 22:42
To anyone who reads this, happy holidays. Hopefully, I’ll have time during the break to whip up a few programs to share.
As it is, I do have a few improvements to announce. First, I’ve set up a nice new cocktail of anti-spam tools that’s working out wonderfully. (A mix of Akismet, Spam Karma 2, and Bad Behaviour)
Second, I’ve installed Rudd-O’s XHTML validator and my site is now completely XHTML valid, and will stay that way.
Third, I installed a plugin named Sociable, so if you view any of my posts individually, you get that nice little row of icon-links to social bookmarking sites.
Finally, I decided to treat myself too, and I’ve installed a dashbar plugin so I can get to the posting page more quickly since I haven’t had time to get bookmarklet-compatible Javascript enabled in Konqueror.
Oh, and I’ll be adding the following once I have time to fix what seem to be incompatibilities with WordPress 2.x:
- Dropdown Archives – So you don’t have to scroll so much.
- Custom Contact – So you can have a contact form in the blog proper.
- WP Default Post Content – To reduce the amount of effort each post requires.
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