underactive.net

Hi there! So I guess I’m going to an annual update on this site, since it’s been over a year since I last posted. Going from almost daily updates, then on to weekly, monthly, quarterly, and now this. 

I’m here partly to dust the cobwebs off this site, but also to check out what’s new with Wordpress. I was previously running 2.3.1 and going to 2.7 took a little more than the usual brainless steps of going to an upgrade URL and clicking a button. 

Why do I need to know what’s new with WP? Without giving away too much info I’ll be tinkering around with it to see if I can make a new custom plugin that we need at my work. Cool Times.

I still have the gallery to set up and recover, but wondering if I want to go that route. I was never too happy with g2’s speed, and its integration with WP left a lot to be desired. Looks like they’re working on g3 which will address the problems I’ve had. Until then, I’m thinking about getting on smugmug or flickr pro. I’d be on one of those now if it weren’t for the fact that 1) I already pay for my own webspace and like having my own files on my own server, 2) I’m also on Apple’s Mobile Me which has a photo service of their own, but it’s slow and shitty, doesn’t work in all browsers, and don’t offer any cool syncing or uploading services that link my iPhone to my iPhoto collection. So I don’t really want to pay for another web-service when I don’t really have to.

As I finished categorizing the old blogs I had imported, I remembered that I still had some entries from my brief blog residence on LJ. So I signed on, exported those, and imported them back here. So that takes care of all my entries from 2004. I know I’ve made a handful in 2005 (I’ll see if I have it backed up on one of my dozen backup DVDs) and I know I only entered in 2 for all of 2006. So I think 99% of all the posts I’ve ever made are on here now.

Bored to tears right now so I’m going through the old blog entries I had imported last week and started tagging them. Along the way I found some gems:

Feb 2001: First mention of the “All Your Base” meme. This was like 60 internet-years ago.

Dec 2001: I bought gas for 89 cents/gallon!!. lolwut? no wai.

Jan 2002: The beginnings of me being seduced by Apple’s offerings and begging for a OS X release for x86 architectures. If only the 2002 version of myself could see what I’m currently working on, hahaha.

Mar 2002: First mention of the Domokun / Kittens meme. The link to the image is broken, but I know you’ve seen it. If you haven’t by now, you lose at the Internets.

Nov 2002: First day working at SOE. *sigh* I can’t believe that was 5 years ago. The pay was shit, but goddammit I miss everyone there and just living in SD. My current job has me making over 3 times as much, but I was happier back then, for sure. Sometimes I think I should have stayed there.

May 2003: First mention of the Star Wars kid. Still cracks me up.

I really have no idea why I didn’t do this sooner, but I just imported a shit-load of my old blogs (back when it was running b2 — the predecessor to Wordpress). There was no b2-wp import tool, but there was an rss2.0-wp tool, so I crafted up a perl script to parse through my old b2 sql dump and convert it to rss2.0. Worked flawlessly and imported 300+ entries.

You’ll notice a big gap where nothing was written from 2004-2006. There were a few posts where I refreshed the site with a new look or something and made a terse statement to that effect, but really I guess I was just not in the mood to update. Also, the whole “blogosphere” scene exploded (I can’t believe I used that damn word!), everyone was doing it, and I didn’t feel I had much to contribute.

I still don’t feel I have much to contribute (haha), but now I feel it’s good to document some of my bullshit stories and rants just for posterity. When I get older and when my brain turns into oatmeal, I still might be able to remember this stuff.

Also to those who read my pre-2007 entries: apologies in advance for not using caps. That’s how I rolled back then, yo.

my new site is up and running — back on my old school underactive.net domain. i think it's my sexiest and cleanest work to date. i've also got a new “now playing” feature that updates to whatever i'm listening to in iTunes, in real time. still have work to do in the other sections. i might totally scrap the gallery (as flashy and cool as it is) and use Gallery (the php one) in its place — i just miss all the features that it had. but we'll see… welp, back to work.

my new domain has been unleashed upon the world — rustedmind.net. there are 2 placeholder pages, and i'm considering changing over to a different gallery template, but for the most part, it's all there. knock yourself out.

underactive.net is still around, but will go offline (or redirect to rustedmind) soon — hell, the site was running off my old PC on a 24/7 static IP DSL connection at my parents' house for the past 2 years. Earthlink's service started to get really shitty, the hard drive started making some whiney noises, so i decided to retire it, power the little sucker down, and get a real host for my new domain. in case anyone is interested, i got a great deal from startlogic.com. i opted for the Virtual Server package for $14.95/mo. that gets you a FreeBSD server, 2 GB space, 60 Gig transfer, PHP, MySQL, unlimited pop accts, yadda yadda… good stuff.

i should have posted about this sooner. oops.

anyways, i’ve moved my blogging over to livejournal. the community aspect was something i could no longer pass up. and now i get to read heather’s LJ entries too. heh. you can check it here.

i’ll make it look nice-like once my new site is up and running. if you’re an LJer, drop me a line and i’ll add you as a friend!

ack! i’ve finally been hit with blog spam. i’ll be disabling comments on here. it wasn’t used much anyways.

all 100+ E3 pics are now up in the gallery. most of them are mine; rob’s pics start somewhere around page 8. i got a handful of booth babe pics in there, but if you want to see more, just check out e3girls.com.

well it should be, in theory. might take a while for the name to resolve properly. that and the fact that Earthlink’s “static” DSL service isn’t really true static IP — it’s PPPoE that’s supposed to give you the same IP, but so far it’s been 50/50. i’ve already made 4 calls since i set it up last night, so we’ll see how it goes. anyways, you’ll notice some new things about the site. while it was down i decided to redo the whole thing. my priority was getting this blog and gallery functional, and it is. still need to work on the other parts of the site which might not be working.