Okay, this is annoying me: Yahoo and Google do not seem to be getting my RSS updates. Grr.
Okay, fixed again. I had to change the code again after removing /blog/ from my url, hopefully the redirect I added will fix this for anyone using google reader or yahoo. If not, just subscribe again and you should be good to go.
And to think it started as such a promising day. After hitting 107f yesterday afternoon, it cooled off quickly, reaching 69f by 9pm. Still, I was looking forward to the rain-showers the weather fools had promised for today. Instead, the morning’s clouds have burned off and it is in the 90′s. So much for a nice rainy day. Worse still: A damned gopher ate my baby burr oak tree.
In other exciting news, thanks to an update to the BlogSecurity article, I’ve undone yesterday’s updates and switched to just using .htaccess to secure my site. The good news, I guess, is that my themes once again conform to the WordPress standard. The bad news is that not everything is working on the back-end. I had to drop the fckeditor.
I’ve updated my site, theoretically making it more secure based on the information over at BlogSecurity. It looks like things worked, although if you see a glitch somewhere, please let me know. I haven’t checked all of the comments pages, and there’s something annoying going on with the funny animals theme. If I set that as the default, I get a bunch of headers errors on the back-end. It is fine on the front, however, so I am ignoring it for now. What else? It would be nice to know how to change the default values in WordPress for the various variables. The ones of most interest to me are stylesheet_url and stylesheet_directory, which I had to hard-code to the new locations based on the BlogSecurity advice. Oh, and my google rss links aren’t working at the moment. Grrr.
I am going to be updating my site throughout the day during breaks from work, so if things aren’t looking quite right, that is because I’ve just hopelessly mangled the code. Also, I am disabling my theme switcher widget, so you’ll all be stuck with whatever theme I am working on at the time. So sorry.
Here’s another simple WordPress widget that I’ve thrown together. It allows you to set a limit to the number of blogroll entries displayed, sort them by all valid sort fields and apply a sort order. It is essentially just a quick way to get at a few of the wp_list_bookmarks() function.
I’ve just started using WordPress as my blogging platform and really like the widget plugins. I also like the idea of letting users skin my blog using a theme switcher. The first one I found was Ryan Boren’s Theme Switcher. Unfortunately, it is not set up as a widget, but rather as plugin you manually add to the sidebar code. That is just too much work for someone as lazy as me. So, here is my slightly modified version as a standard widget. You can add it to your wp-content/plugins directory, then go to Presentation-> Widgets and add it to your sidebar. If you click on the configure icon, you can add whatever title you want (the default title is ‘THEMES’) and change from the default list to a dropdown. Have fun. I really didn’t do much work on this thing other than to grab some code off the ‘net to turn it into a widget. If there is somewhere that I should post it, somebody please let me know.
I’ve updated my site. Yay! I forgot to do a screen capture of my old site. Boo! Anyway, here is the new and improved Oliphant Parts blog, running on WordPress rather than Moveable Type. It looks cleaner, although I haven’t decided if I like it yet. And to make things more exciting, I changed hosting providers, so half the time I get redirected to the old site. This should be fixed over the next few days, hopefully.
Interesting . . . one of my photos of Emmett is appearing all over the place (here, here, here, here, here, here and here). It looks like people like stealing my stuff. At least most aren’t like this genius here and try to take credit for the shot. It’s kind of fun tracking my stuff, although maybe it’s time to add some watermarks.
I’m going to another swim meet this weekend, and if I have time, I’ll be upgrading my MovableType install. Not only is there a new version that I want to upgrade to, but I’ve finally spent the extra bucks and ordered a hosting package that gives me mysql and want to use that instead of static posts. What does all this mean? My site will probably be down for a few days while I curse at my computer and rant about inadequate upgrade instructions. It will be great fun, I am sure.
Please forgive me: I am a little slow today. I stayed up late last night playing the human TiVo for work. I should blog something about the Rainbow Family and the irony of their destructiveness towards nature, but I won’t. That ship sailed a week or so ago and besides, I’m driving this train (how’s that for excessive use of bad metaphors?). I’ve got the outline to a blog about Otto Zehm (a janitor beaten and suffocated to death a few months ago by the Spokane Police Department for no good reason) but I just do not feel up to it today. So instead I offer you yet another minor layout tweak. Links to my very old stories, poetry and photography are back up. Enjoy. Then go pound your head into a wall to jog the memories loose and enjoy again. Maybe tomorrow I will feel like writing.
I spent yesterday emailing what mighT hAve beeN Years Ago, which was fun. Nothing like opening the floodgates on old memories both very good and very bad. I think we are both better off leaving it as what might have been rather than switching it to what was. Anyway, time to focus on today, which means running upstairs every half hour to start a new logging and encoding session. Oh what fun.
Last week, Erik introduced me to payperpost, which was being debated on TechCrunch. Per their home page, payperpost offers the following for bloggers:
“Get Paid to Blog. You’ve been writing about Web sites, products, services and companies you love for years and you have yet to benefit from all the sales and traffic you have helped generate. That’s about to change. With PayPerPost™ advertisers are willing to pay you to post on topics. Search through a list of topics, make a blog posting, get your content approved, and get paid. It’s that simple.”
As I write, there are twnety-two opportunities available, four of which require a positive post. The pay per post ranges from $2.50 (the majority) to $10 (only one at this rate). The required word count? 10 to 100, with the majority under 50. I see nothing wrong in being paid to post. Journalists and advertisers do it all the time. Some postings require a positive post, which I could do without review first (and a positive one at that). Make it something I wholeheartedly enjoy and I will wholeheartedly endorse it, however. The majority accept both positive and negative reviews. That I can do. And fifty words? I can pull fifty words out of my arse on ANY subject in a minute or less. That does not sound so unreasonable. Hell, I am at 250 words with this right now!
Why not get paid to write? The argument at TechCrunch tends to boil down to integrity. Somehow, we as bloggers lose our integrity if we submit a paid post. I have seen the blogosphere, and for the most part, it ain’t purdy. In general, integrity, like grammar, spelling and coherent thought, is in short supply. Being paid to post is not going to have a major dampening effect on blogger integrity. Is it the pay itself? Does receiving money for services somehow sully one as a blogger? If so, there is a hell of a lot of Google Ad Sense code that needs to come down NOW! What about being a blogger makes you more pure than being a lawyer, burger flipper or a prostitute? Really, what?
I am not a shill. Just the other day, while I was driving my solid, dependable GMC Sierra K1500 crew cab SLT, with the luxurious leather interior and power everything, I told my wife just that.
“Wife,” I said, enjoying the cool feeling of the leather against my bare thighs (I was wearing shorts. Very rarely do I drive naked), wishing that the air conditioner had not died, “I am not a shill.”
“That’s nice, dear.” she responded. “But I still want you to fix the brakes on my Toyota RAV4 before you become a widowed shill.”
Being paid to post is not a bad thing; I would do it in a heartbeat if I had complete control over what I wrote and actually trusted the organization that I was writing for. And therein lies the rub for me: Trust. I know very little about payperpost, other than what they have on their web site. The one link they offered with external information about them is gone. Why? My guess is because the BusinessWeek online article, “Polluting the Blogosphere”, did not cast them in the greatest light, and they realized that bad publicity is NOT better than no publicity at all. Even without the bad publicity, I still would not trust them. Once again, why? First, they want my social security number. Second, they take ninety days to pay for services. Ninety days is an eternity with an unknown company. If I am going to whore myself for $2.50, I want that money immediately. And I am not going to give an unknown online company my SSN to get it.
Hopefully payperpost is completely legitimate, but I have no guarantee that they will keep my SSN safe. Even if they do not plan on using it for identity theft, or sell it to others who will, how do I know what sort of payperpost has in place to protect my SSN? I still have my VA letter apologizing for their little screwup earlier this year. Oops, your personal data was stolen. So sorry, please monitor your credit and accept our sincere apologies. Gee, I feel better already. Fortunately, that appears to have turned out okay. So glad I am not in the Navy or Marine Corps.
Identity theft happens every day. There is no reason to increase your chances of being a victim by giving out personal data to a questionable company. Payment for services happens every day as well. Still, I am not willing to risk another identity theft incident for a $5 payment that I may very well never receive, and I recommend that nobody else does either. I may not have integrity, but I hopefully have a somewhat secure identity, right?
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Today’s invasive terror brought to you by the colour yellow.
Saturday is my day for quiet reflection and self-aggrandizing pomposity. Saturday is the day I ask the Big Questions. Why am I here?* Have I led a good life?** Where the hell did I leave my book? Seriously, where is my book?
This is but one of several heads mounted along the walls of my grandfather’s house. They used to scare the hell out of me when I was younger.
Poor Aaron has a love/hate relationship with sheep: He loves the way they taste, but hates the way they always want to trample him into dust. So with that in mind, here is his exciting 2006 Mutton Bustin’ ride. All 5 seconds or so of it.
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