So, I’ve decided that Keith Garner’s Blog is a pretty shitty name for the mental effluence you see on this blog. I’m trying to come up with something better, but I’m drawing a blank.
Any ideas?
Archive of entries posted on February 2005
Upgraded WordPress…
As you can maybe tell by the new look, I’ve upgraded WordPress to 1.5. I’ve been very happy with the update for a few reasons:
The biggest win has been the new template system. I can create my look and feel and when wordpress updates, I won’t have to lose what I’ve done. In previous versions of wordpress I was having to update index.php every release, which caused me to not upgrade, even in the case of security fixes.
The downside is that I haven’t yet found a good anti-spam solution. By default, WordPress is pretty good about putting stuff that it thinks is spam into the moderation queue. However, on spam heavy days, I can see myself flushing out 100s of bad messages.
The other problem is that comment spammers have moved on to trackback spamming. Everyone with a WordPress blog (and many with Movable Type) were hammered this weekend with trackback spam. In 1.2.x and 1.5, trackbacks do not go through a moderation step by default, they end up right on the page. From reading other blogs that cover this, it seems to all come from one asshole and counter measures are being worked on. *sigh*
One really cool thing I found while editing has been the Plugin Manager. Its a great tool for plugins it knows about. It lets you know if they are up to date, and if you configure things properly, you can even do one-click installs of a lot of plugins.
The plugin manager led me to the MyNetflix plugin by Jimmy Oliver, which was written for pre-1.5. Since WP 1.5 comes with all the RSS functions, MyNetflix has some namespace collisions due to its included RSS library. The plugin also just dumped the whole queue, which really clogged up the sidebar as I have 124 DVDs in my queue, I would have liked to limit that. You also had to hard code the URL in the php source file, which was silly. It meant you could only ever follow one queue. So, based on Jimmy’s work I created KTGNetflix that fixes these few things. KTGNetflix requires wordpress 1.5. You can call it like ktgnetflix("your rss url") and it’ll show you the top 20 items in your queue or you can specify the limit by passing an integer argument like ktgnetflix("your rss url", 12) . KTGNetflix is now powering the netflix queue you see on the sidebar.
Georgia on my stomach
The article Obesity fight nips at Southern eats talks about the South and its fight with calories. It specifically mentions a bar in Decatur, Georgia named Mulligan’s, which I couldn’t find a web page for.
In any case, I think I need to travel to Mulligan’s two have two of the specials on their menu that are mentioned in the news article. Both of these stir up feelings of revulsion and hunger.
The “Hamdog”: a hot dog wrapped by a beef patty that’s deep fried, covered with chili, cheese and onions and served on a hoagie bun. Oh yeah, it’s also topped with a fried egg and comes with two fistfuls of fries.
the “Luther Burger”: a bacon-cheeseburger served on a Krispy Kreme doughnut.
[Update: Fark also had a thread on the Hamdog. Thanks to the forums I was directed to an article with pictures at Consumption Junction. The ads on that page are totally NSFW, you have been warned.]
“How small does your penis have to be?”
This morning the Chicago Tribune had the article 25,999-pound fashion statement about International‘s new CXT “severe service truck.” Asshats like Ahston Kutcher think they are all the rage. This is such a gross vehicle I threw up a little in my mouth while reading the article.
This just reminds me of the old joke of the Kenworth Pilgrimage, which it seems someone took too seriously. Also, its makes the P-Diddy/Puff-Daddy/Whatever-the-fuck-we’re-calling-him-this-week-and-for-saying-this-he’ll-bust-a-cap-in-my-ass/Sean “Puffy” Combs Diet Pepsi commercial from the Superbowl much less funny.
[Update: I don't know how I missed this in my first reading, but this quote was pointed out to me (emphasis mine):
Daughter Shaylin, 15...adding that her Hummer is more practical to take to school, although "the International is way cooler. Now at school they call me either The Hummer Girl or The International Girl."
If you're being called "The Hummer Girl" I suspect that 1) you're very popular and 2) its not due to your parents' car. Either way, "the Hummer is more practical to take to school"? Sure, if you're in IRAQ!]
Google Preview
My Firefox extention of the week is GooglePreview. Just thought you should know.
Fables of the Deconstruction
Today I walked by the Sun-Times building while returning from lunch. Its coming down pretty quick. I snapped off two quick photos with my camera. Part of what lead us over there was the earth-shattering thumping from the machine destroying what remains of the road.
Rachelle Bowden once again has bested me by doing a series of shots of various stages of destruction.
I should also point out the time-lapse flash animation of the deconstruction.