Just a quick test of the Wordpress for iPhone app. Pretty slick so far. Seems like it’s really easy to add photos to the post straight from the phone, but I’m not sure how to control where they will display. (The preview, which is quite nice, indicates the pics will be at the end of the post.)

So far, my only other complaint is that there are no tools to affect font style and hand typing tags is a bitch. (It also makes linking a real PITA.)

I like the idea of a Local Drafts vs Drafts on the server. Seems pretty easy to post a draft, and then touch it up on a desktop before publishing, if necessary. Let’s see how well the phone app handles editing a draft on the server, if it’s been modified after the phone app posted it. The answer is Not Bad. The pictures convert from being detached objects to urls to the now posted images… And if you add a pic to a draft, the same thing happens. Moving the location of the image is nigh-impossible on the phone (ok, now I really want copy n’ paste), but is pretty easy to do online.  It makes me glad that the WP admin interface got an overhaul.

Now, I need to check out the WP mobileadmin plugin, and the WP iPhone Theme plugin.

One of my favorite people of all time, George Carlin, has died. He’s had his share of health problems, so while it’s not the biggest surprise ever… I feel a bit like I’ve been hit by a truck. Seriously. George Carlin was one of my heroes. No exaggeration.

I’m glad we got a chance to see him a couple years ago in Vegas. I had never seen him in person before, so it was really a lifelong dream come to fruition. I’m not generally affected by celebrity deaths, in fact… almost never. George, though… fuck.

So, to remember him, I leave you with the Seven Words You Can’t Say On TV:

Bill Maher’s got a documentary coming out in October called Religulous. The trailer is out and it looks pretty good. Maher’s typical quick wit and no-holds-barred commentary look like it will A) make for an interesting movie and B) possibly get him killed.

I will be there on opening day.

On the trailer page, there is also a link to DisbeliefNet, a site which I had never heard of before. Actually, the site looks like it’s put together to support the movie (a quick whois on the domain reveals it to be owned by Lion’s Gate), but has some pretty interesting and humorous content itself.

I especially appreciated the article on The Evolution of The Burkini. Hot stuff.

I followed an Amazon link from one of my favorite webcomics and stumbled across this Justice League movie, pictured on the left. (If you must know, the link I clicked on was for a He-Man animated movie. No, I’m not some sort of closet He-man fan. It’s just that I can’t believe he’s still around. What? No, it’s true. Whatever. As if you’re so perfect and refined.)

The Justice League cartoons tend to be pretty decent kid’s shows and I haven’t seen this one. So, I’m casually observing the scene on the cover. All the heroes who can fly are taking off up into the air. Behind them are spaceships blasting off. It looks like something serious is going down. Like a huge space war or incoming alien armada. Very dramatic.

Wait… what the hell is Green Arrow doing? He’s aiming his bow into the sky. That’s just great. Shooting an arrow straight up is against the SECOND RULE on the Augusta High School’s P.E. Department’s website for archery safety. Didn’t Green Arrow go to High School? Or camp? Or hear of gravity?

Plus they’re launching SPACE SHIPS at whatever the threat is. YOU HAVE A BOW AND ARROW. We don’t need to call the Mythbusters to find out what happens when you fire an arrow at something in the upper atmosphere.

A little out of your league, so to speak, dontcha think, Greenie?

Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of “adds” on Digg. I’m pretty active on there, I guess, so a couple, I understand. Whenever another digg user friends (only the web could turn that into a verb) me, I receive an email. It looks like:

Hey there! Stonehenge360 is your latest fan. He became your fan because he likes what you are up to on Digg and wants to see what you think is interesting. You can either leave him as a fan or add him to your own list of friends. Check out his profile here:

http://digg.com/users/Stonehenge360

Cheers,

The Digg Team

Control what emails you receive from Digg here:
http://digg.com/settings/email

So, then I go look at Stonehenge360’s Recent Activity on Digg, and I see:

Stonehenge360 has added Steven Schlottman, Erin, J, pkulak, Vote #1 Moojj, digitalgopher, dadof2, Mr. Baby Man, JoeyC, Spencer, Mihr, Gazerock, xoogie, Curtisnot, Vonkhan, phillip torrone, Chris Gray, Daniel Šimko, PAWEL FLAGA, Edward Alexander, johnlandes, Ralph, Steven Safak, Lord_Mizaru, Dane Kenney, zovi, hugesaks, bluedragoon, Ankush Dhiman, Phil, glass junky, Frank, you, Dennis, lese, bunny607, Leo Laporte, Aviar, Wayne, Rich Tannehill, Prakash, dabneyd, Jesse Jones, Dan Huard, Ralphy, Nathan, bambinette, Josh, Joe, selphishnerd, Celsius032, tyrstephen, Amar, Furious.Styles, purrp, diskazz, will4042, TrainingName, UCBearcats, Tyson H. , Carson, james estrada, Chelsea, johnsmith118, powersaber89, Ian Mansfield (a guy!), Chris Taran, Zaibatsu, Ken, UnlivedPhalanx, Noah, Rick Schmidt, Mike Z, tljff9, Alex H., Sarah Lane, Joe Biden, ricktoid, mike, Wil Wheaton, Roberto Villarreal, typ44q, P9, Diggnation, sahaskatta, boober86, hammydude, dpk87, justinvt, quokkapox, Flabbadabba, Troy E, DanThePainter, Christopher, iching, Miguel Lopez, verge, Bwack and CLIFF W. to his network.

I refer back to the mail that said he “became [my] fan because he likes what [I am] up to on Digg”.

Really? I think you, Digg, should stop guessing at his motives for adding me. I don’t think he knows me at all and I don’t think it’s very nice of you to play with my emotions like that.

PS: Stonehenge360 is just the most recent example of this. I’ve gotten a bunch of mass adds recently. I don’t get the point of having a huge number of ‘friends’ on Digg that you don’t actually know. It waters down the effectiveness of the Digg features. In other words, who cares what my friends are digging, if I don’t even know their tastes?

As most people know, a computer can run certain tasks in the background. These are jobs that it’s doing behind the scenes and typically hidden from the user, sometimes at the user’s request. Most people’s brains work like this too, to some degree. I know hardcore coders who are constantly thinking about whatever problem they are trying to solve and will, in the middle of lunch, have a “eureka” moment. Hell, I’ve done the same and I’m just a Perl hack (at best).

However, my mind is cluttered with much less important background tasks. For example, the other day I was chatting with a friend and he was having a particularly dreadful day. “Shoot me,” he requested. I responded that I was all done with killing for the day and he needed to ask again tomorrow, or some such. So, he said, “I didn’t say you had to kill me.” My retort was so unfunny that I don’t even recall what it was. However, unbeknownst to me, a background process started running.

This morning, I’m in the shower and an epiphany strikes me. The proper response would have been, “What? And waste a bullet?” Now, I don’t claim that it’s comedic genius, but it is better than whatever the other line was.

Why the hell was my brain still working on that? It’s not like I can ping the guy two days later and deliver the re-written punch line. Hell, it’s not even that funny: just a minor improvement.

I need some sort of Activity Monitor or task manager for my brain. Or maybe just a command line…

ps -ax  | grep -i "stupid joke" | awk '{print "kill "$1""}' | zsh

(I realize the flaws with the above line, it’s a joke. Lighten up.)

So, we’re both feeling like crap. My lungs are bugging me from weeks with bronchitis and she has a massive headache. So, this is the exchange:

GF: “I need to put my head in a vice.”
ME: “I don’t have a vice big enough.”
GF: “Are you saying I have a fat head?”
ME: “No… I’m saying I don’t have a fat vice.”

If you don’t hear from me after a while, this might be why.

At least she laughed…

I got into an odd discussion about calendars and leap years, so I did a little wiki research on the topic and stumbled across this tidbit: “In the Islamic calendar, leap months are not used. They are forbidden by the Qur’an, which says…”

WTF? Were they running out of shit to ban?!

Mecca, sometime in the 7th century. A wise looking prophet, MUHAMMED, sits with a SCRIBE. MUHAMMAD dictates as the SCRIBE scribes.

SCRIBE

“Ok, cartoons of the prophet. Got it. What’s next?”

MUHAMMAD

“Leap years!”

SCRIBE

“What?”

MUHAMMAD

“I hate that shit. I can never remember how many days in February!”

SCRIBE

“I’m not adding that. It’s stupid.”

MUHAMMAD

“You have to! I’m fucking Muhammad and an angel told me Leap Years are evil! Don’t make me add something about stoning mouthy scribes…”

SCRIBE

“FINE. Whatever. Next?”

The above didn’t actually happen, as the Qur’ān did not exist in book form at the time of Muhammad’s death in 632. It is, however, funnier this way. It would be funnier still as a cartoon.

It’s 2008. Where’s my flying car?

Have a good ‘un.

If you’re seeing this message, that means the new nameservers are doing their jobs. Yay.

I’ve been shopping for a new web host for ages. I found A2Hosting a while back, and liked what the had to offer quite a bit. I was then prompted to pull the trigger when Merlin Mann offered a 20% off FOR LIFE code over on his blog, 43Folders. (I won’t post the code here, you gotta go to Merlin’s blog to get it.) So, here I am. If you are in need of a good hosting service, take a look at A2Hosting’s info. If you want feedback from me, personally, though… come back in a few months. :)

PS: Something is messed up with the install/setup. Many links are 404, atm. Working on it, but it may be later this weekend.

PPS: Awesome. Moshu over at the Wordpress support forums set me on the right track to fix the problem. Bonus fix: My RSS feeds are back.