I know that I just barely posted, but I felt that this was worthwhile in adding…

The past few weeks on and off, shortly after I’ve posted, I’ve gotten an IM. And the screen name has changed each time. Its been interesting to say the least…

2/21/2008 - (9:10:08 AM) EssentialSalmon: Hello my friend.
2/23/2008 - (10:11:57 AM) DogEaredSalmon: hi. do I know you ? I don’t recognize the IM name.
2/26/2008 - (8:09:49 AM) ObsoleteSalmon: hello
2/28/2008 - (8:45:51 AM) NumerousSalmon: I do believe that you are a fucking slut bag whore.
3/3/2008 - (9:45:42 AM) FreedSalmon: Barack Hussein Obama is a documented Christian. He goes to church, and he prays to the Christian god. Do you really want that kind of person in the white house? Vote for Hillary Clinton, the one with experience. Pass this message on.

Needless to say, after getting the last one (and laughing my ass off), I felt the need to finally say something about this. The first time or two that this happened, I got a bit frustrated because I thought someone I knew was harassing me. But, as I came to realize and did a bit of Googling, well, it’s apparently something that’s been going around. All I’ve been able to find is that in some error messages related to it, its given the information “Project Upstream AI v.4.0.0a1″. Googling that brings up nothing. Still, interesting.

And just because I’m using the LiveJournal Crossposter plug-in on WordPress, and it crossposts public to my LJ, well, I’m victim.

Ah well, amusing, to say the least… I might have to update and link back to this post as time passes if they get any funnier… But some folks just have a bit too much time on their hands… Me too, because I’m sitting here writing about it…

If you’ve looked at my site directly within the last 7 hours or so, you might not notice much. I think the only thing that’s really noticeable is the fact that my RSS subscription feed info at the bottom of the page has been replaced by my Feedburner link. That and the nice “flare” as they call it, for each entry, because I know that you’ve been dying to Digg my entries. Hell, I don’t even use Digg, but I wanted to put it there in case someone else did. I might have to look into it.

So… Like I said, I was going to do some work on WordPress yesterday. Amidst my homework, I took a few breaks and installed a few plugins. I’m still debating doing my WordPress upgrade, seeing I’m about a version out of date, but I’m a little afraid of doing an upgrade. You see, when I initially installed WordPress on the site, I used Fantastico. It was already on my site, and it did everything for me without me having to worry. But now, if I upgrade, well, I’m going to have to fully back everything up (which I’ve been doing anyways, so I’m not too concerned) as well as figure out how to actually physically install WordPress. Maybe I’ll wait and do it on Friday. We’ll see.

Needless to say, when you find a good plugin, you shouldn’t see much of it on the frontend of a site. Things like the Digg/Facebook/del.icio.us/StumbleIt link from FeedBurner are good to see, but other ones aren’t as visible. So, I’ll share some of the changes…

1) I’ll be starting tomorrow and going back to day 1 and tagging entries. This is in preparation for installing Related Posts. I’ve seen it in action on both of Goob’s sites and its a nice little one that will automatically back link to a few posts that are similar to the one you’re reading, if you look at the single post view. Nice little feature.
2) Of course, as you can see, the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin, which will be taking care of my feeds and letting me better track whom might be reading me. Not that I’m all that concerned, but it’ll be nice to know, seeing I don’t get many comments as of yet.
3) I hadn’t really optimized my page for accessibility and finding, but I felt it would be a good idea, so I put on the Google XML Sitemaps. This’ll help me increase my traffic some, which I’d definitely like that help with. More readers is nice in the end.
4) Mobile accessibility was almost a key theme with three plugins that I put into place. First off, I added in one called Text Me which will send me text messages everytime I get an admin e-mail (i.e. comments, new users, etc). And if you add to that my WPhone plugin that simplifies my control panel for me to use when/if I log in to my cell phone, and my Wordpress Mobile which lets my site now be easily read on any cell phone? Well, let’s just say that not only can I easily use my site on the go now, but I’ve also made it easier for folks to log on with their phones/PDAs and read my site too if they wanted.

So that’s about it when it comes to updating. The truth is, I really like using plugins. They’re making my life much much easier on my site when it comes to adding things here and there…

Yesterday was an exercise in cutting corners. Matter of fact, Saturday was too, just cleaned up better…

See, on the weekends, I don’t have much time to sit down and write, so I’m starting to “pre-draft” during the weekends with additional thoughts of mine and I’m just saving a few drafts so I can come in on the weekends and click and post.

In fitting with my Saturday morning theme, I’ll include this, which is a link to the 7M3 setlist from Saturday night. A bit more traditional, seeing it has “Cumbersome” and “Water’s Edge,” it’ll probably look a lot more comforting than the Friday night setlist. The difference? The Friday show was a “superfan appreciation show.” In other words: Folks who have heard “Cumbersome” and “Water’s Edge” so freaking many times that they’re sick and tired of hearing them and all of the “Cumber-fucks” in the audience who scream for just those two. Not that I don’t like them, but I’m glad to hear some of the cuts like “Flagship Eleanor,” “Home Stretch,” “Angry Blue,” and the infamous “? Song.”

Other than that, speaking of cleaning up, I’m going to be adding some WordPress plugins over the course of the next few days. I also really need to go back and start tagging my entries, seeing I haven’t since day one. When I have my new plug-ins installed on my site, well, I’ll give a heads up to them because a few of them will be functionally nice for some friends, I know. They’ll especially be that way for me.

I’d better get some food and off to homework before having my fun today…

Seriously. I’ve been doing that since day 1 of this site, trying to make sure I post something a day. I’ve held off on a few topics because I want to be better read before I shoot off at the lip on here, and there are other topics that I just haven’t even covered yet. But as long as I keep living, I’ll always come up with something new. I’m a writer, its in my nature.

Its like a great little blog I read about writing everyday. I found that on another blog that I’ve had bookmarked for a while about first year blogger mistakes. Both are very good points, and things that I’ve had in mind…

But for now, this is more of a utility entry for me… Just wanted to say a few things of webmaster note…

1) For folks who might remember my old site, TryingSoHard.com, it’s been just a frontpage that notes about the change of location to here. Well, I was talking with my father the other day, and he mentioned something about being able to host more than one domain with my package through SearchItUp.com. I looked into it, and he was right. So the other night, I copied all of my files from my old host to my desktop, then uploaded it to this host. I’ve got enough space that the small 50k of all of the files I had up there doesn’t affect this one at all. Needless to say, that’s where most of my old pictures were, so it let all of those on my LJ, MySpace blog, and such stay as they were. Cool.

2) Speaking of subdomains, I launched one for one of my classes the other day… When I have the necessary web stuff up and running on it, I’ll be linking it here because I’ll probably want some folks to trial run it for some input on it. That’ll be fun. Creating a web based simulation for a Training and Development class.

3) I check my Webalizer stats for my page to see where folks are coming from, search strings, etc. Seeing its provided by my host, its all I really need for a sense of traffic. It tells me that I get around 90-160 visitors a day, which is respectable for me to think about that so many folks are reading. If you are reading, please feel free to register and comment, I appreciate it, and I don’t bite. And besides, if you register and comment, you can always download my music for free too. And when I get a new album done, you’ll be up to date before having to download them all in one shot…

4) Which leads me to something I talked about: my “greatest hits album.” Needless to say, its going slow. I have little to no motivation to re-record some of these tracks that I’ve recorded 2-3 times already. I’m slowly working on it, but it’ll be something that will take a whiiiiiile longer, I’d say.

5) Oh, and speaking of the Webalizer stats from point #3, I noticed something sort of funny. See, this blog is pulled onto my LJ as public entries and it’s also pulled as a syndicated feed there too. What I had completely forgotten about, was the fact that there are public feed readers that pull the latest X pictures. That being said, I’ve noticed on days that I post pictures, my traffic “spikes up.” I’m a whore, so I’m going to post a picture now. :D

And if you haven’t noticed, and my friends on Facebook probably already noticed this, but I’ll say it here. I have a decent digital camera, but I don’t use it. I’m a slacker. Its a lot easier for me to snap a few shots with my cell phone and mobile upload it, rather than find a camera cable, unload, reload, etc. And my cell phone is smaller, of course, so I always have it with me. I need to really thank Susan for pointing out the mobile uploads to me and suggesting it, seeing she’s my phone buddy with the same phone as I have.

But that’s about it, really. Busy day with tests and papers to work on, but seeing I’m a good boy who follows the news, well, I’ve been thinking a lot about change…

More on that point later. I’m really making sure what I say is right when I say it…

I finally added myself a LJ crossposter. So if you’re on my syndicated feed there and on my friends list too, you can read whichever you prefer. The only difference is, whenever it crossposts an entry to my real journal? You can’t comment there, you have to comment back on my website itself. If you’re on the feed, you can still comment there.

I thought about it from time to time, and I never really pursued it, but seeing this is public anyways, I figured why not?

Besides, it’ll save the work of those who want to read me and didn’t add the syndicated feed but are normally on my friends list.

Of course, this sort of makes my “Duplicated on my LiveJournal” category a bit erroneous in nature to have, but that’s the nature of the beast, I guess…

So I was talking with my friend Elayne tonight and I mentioned the whole song download thing–how I have all of my music up for free download on my discography page. Needless to say, she had just registered for the site and afterwards was having problems logging in…

I fixed that, in case anyone else was having that problem. Now, on the sidebar on all pages, there’s an easy link to register or to log-in if you’re not logged in. With me fixing this, the only other thing I have to do webmaster wise really is get my Google Adsense setup so I can get a few extra bucks here and there.

Its all in the little things…

I’ve been babbling about the back-end recently, so its only fitting that I finally found a solution… I think? See, I’m a bit slow in thinking of this one, and instead of messing around with CGI or PHP, I figured I should try this out another way. I mean, I’m running WordPress, so why not just find a plug-in for this sucker, eh?

So I’ve got it installed and I’m just waiting on some support from the creator. Very cool little plug-in, too. And it does similar to what I was trying to do with having to make people input an e-mail address for downloads. Actually, it goes a step farther than that…

To use downloads now, you’ll have to be a registered user on my site. So you might as well comment and join the blog over here too then. And once you’re all logged in, you’ll be good to go and right as rain on every single post that I make here. Kills two birds with one stone, if you ask me.

Also what’s cool about this one too is that with the way this Download plug-in works, let’s just say I write a new song too. Instead of just uploading albums, I can upload individual songs as well. So then, you could just click on through and get each song individually as I put up new EPs and the like…

I think that’s about it. I need to kick this furry orange blob from my lap and get some grub and take care of my homework and such. Dinner tonight is going to be Thai food with my in-laws to celebrate my impending birthday…

Well, I’m slowly working on it, but the discography page is coming together… See, to let you in a little on the whole “behind the scenes” aspect of things?

I’m trying to install a Perl/CGI script called WideXL. Why? For the reason that if someone’s downloading an album of mine, I’d like to know who’s doing so. Not as much so I have e-mail addresses later on, but just so I have a better sort of tracking idea than the standard “X downloads” that I can get from my Webalyzer stats through cPanel. And also with having e-mail addresses that way, whenever I release a new album, I could very easily just e-mail everyone who downloaded a prior album and they could then come on in and download the new albums without having to worry too much about checking back often.

So finally my admin panel is working on the script that I installed, but for some reason or another, I’m having issues with the links working. It’s a small little thing, and something I’m sure I’ll figure out soon enough as is. Until then, I have two of the zip files online on my site, and I’ll be slowly working on packaging others over these next few days, and I’ll have everything “good to go” by the 31st, I believe.

Until then, though, I did put a neat little thing on there. I added a PayPal Button like this one:

for people who want to bypass the B.S. of putting in their e-mail address for each and every download. Yeah, it’s a bit of a bribe, but to chip a few bucks my way and get all of the downloads would help out this poor college boy/webmaster, and the cat on his lap could get a nice wet food dinner. The Wooster cat on my lap would like that, I know. Yes, yes he would.

So would Cassie, but she’s at my feed, curled up in a ball.

The more and more I do things on this site, the more and more I realize that I’ve never learned in the end. And all of these small learning things are great little pieces to put together as a whole later. Or so I keep telling myself.

The latest “issue” I’ve stumbled across is Perl and CGI scripting. See, right now I’ve been talking about these nice little downloads for whomever wants them of all of my prior albums. That being said, I’ve been sorting through code and trying to figure out what’s what with some handlers that I’ve found for it. I think I’ve got close to a solution and then whammo! 404 not found. Son of a…

So hopefully by the end of the next few days I’ll have something live on the site. It’ll be just my first two albums, which I think most people have, but even still, you’ll be able to hear me at my roughest and most unproduced ever… On a site where I’ve done some of my roughest and most unproduced work ever…

So folks, after all of the issues yesterday, here I am, back online, and back live. A few quick uploads to this directory or that one, an import or two, and whammo, here I am.

If you’d priorly registered to be a user here, you’ll need to re-register, sadly, because those users didn’t carry over. Even still, things worked well for the switch over. I believe the syndication feed on LiveJournal still works, but we’ll find out soon enough…

I have to give my new host major major props. Folks, seriously, if you’re looking for webhosting, check out SearchItUp.com. I e-mailed them with each and every issue, including an unforseen billing issue that popped up, and they took care of it on the spot without any problems. Seriously. I registered my hosting at about 1:30pm yesterday, got my confirmation e-mails by 11:50pm, they talked me through my nameserver switch-over–something that I know is easy, but seeing eHost was my domain service too, well, I had problems with knowing where to go to set my nameservers. And then, I was just waiting for the propagation at 2am, went to sleep, had the billing issues at 7am which were resolved by 9am with a quick e-mail, and then my service was online not even an hour after that. And because most of their e-mails back to me were within 20-30 minutes of when I sent in a question, well, I was completely surprised at the great service. And they told me they’re even faster when you actually open a support ticket. Not bad at all. Major props from me.

Let’s see… I have a good story to tell, but I’m waiting till I get something in the mail first to tell my tale. Other than that, I was excited to hear that Seven Mary Three’s day and night driving will be pre-leaked on iTunes within the next few weeks. This means that all of the pre-orders of the CD will be shipped earlier than February 19th, and I’ll end up getting an early birthday gift (January 31st) if everything works out well. Beautiful. I’m addicted to the samples that I’ve heard to this point, and I’m just itching to have that album in my hands. Simply amazing.

That’s all I’ve got, folks. Thank you for your patience in working with me, and I’ll be back to me sooner than you’d imagine…

Another day, another problem, eh?

Today, my sister was kind enough to tell me that apparently our sites were down for a few hours. If you’re just now joining me here on this, I appreciate you checking in and reading, and soon, I’ll be struggling to aggregate everything over to my new host. Okay, not struggling, but if there’s some down-time, you know why.

Things should be switched over tonight, I’d imagine. Thankfully cPanel and WordPress both allow easy backup and restore of their content, so if I did everything right, I’ll be online and you guys won’t even have noticed the difference.

And I’ve got a good story or two for when I get back. I know I keep saying that, but I promise that I do. Honest.

It’s a rainy day outside. Days like this are best for staying in and doing nothing.

So today, on my plate:

1) Homework
2) Some upkeep here on the site including my about page, my discography page, and maybe looking into a way to get my albums up here so folks can download them.
3) Play some Wii

No, I don’t own a Wii. My sister has gratiously left hers over here for our use while she’s loaded down on her semester of school work, and seeing she’ll be spending a lot of weekends with us, well, makes sense, I guess. Of course, this is the semester that I’m loaded down myself, so it means that now Sarah has something to do while I’m working on that homework. Hah. Lovely.

I’d also like to wish my youngest reader here a happy 8th birthday. So enjoy your day, Abby!

That’s about it for me today…

So uh, yeah… Not knowing when I’ll be back at a computer, I just thought I’d post some “upkeep” stuff here for my friendly readers: like all ten of you.

1) Figured out my problems with the webpage the other day and I can say the word “board” as much as I’d like. Apparently, it’s something in the “mod_security” file on the server end. I love eHost. They took care of me in no time flat.

2) For the folks who are reading on LJ and want to comment on the actual posts, or random readers on my site that I might not know about that have wanted to comment, you can make your username/accounts here. And if it doesn’t e-mail you a password, contact me through some means here and I’ll fix it. Rob had that issue earlier, and I figured that one out in no time flat.

3) I changed one small thing that you won’t see unless you’re reading the entries directly on my page directly, and that’s the fact that it says the author’s name with the category and post info. Why does that make a difference? Well, my wife Sarah is also an authorized writer on here. And if we ever go on vacation, who knows, I might make my sister an authorized writer to post stories or something in my absence, despite her weird gnome obsession…

You never know. Or do you? Hah.

That’s all. For now.

WordPress has now eaten a few of my posts, rambling about eggnog, my morning routines, buttered toast, and my syndicated LJ feed, well, I’m a bit frustrated. I’ve learned that everytime I get these problems, I just message Goob over on the HeyItsFree forums because of his work on HeyItsFree.net and his personal site and it seems that seconds later, I find the solution…

That was about an hour ago. Still have yet to find one. Even as I type this, I have no idea if it’ll go through. I kept getting a lovely 404 error every time that I tried to submit a post.

Not fun. Not fun at all. I was having the same problem last night, but it was with words in a post. I simplified that by making a JPG:

Yeah, ghetto, but it worked.

To all who are reading the LJ syndy of this: Thanks for the comments (Yeah, just you so far, Rob, but still). If you want to leave comments, I’d suggest registering here and commenting because it’s a bit more permanent over the comments that are left on LJ, which delete when the syndication blog-roll moves up.

Here’s to hoping I’ve fixed it… And if not, this isn’t going to be fun…