The Code Cave

Goldfish from PatrickSwayze.org is getting a large Café Voltaire from my local coffee Arabica Coffee House, or equal funds towards an other beverage that might be more to taste. ;).

Thanks Goldfish!
Now go check your paypal account!

Goldfish gave me some patient assistance with the RegEx statements required for the EasyWPUpdate script. Without that help, the script would have been weeks away from completion! So, I am going to do my duty and giving thanks, by taking Goldfish out for a drink.

I came across Goldfish and several other helpful characters on the #sed IRC channel on the IRC Freenode network. Now, I’ll admit, that the first thing that comes to mind when I think “IRC” is “IRC?!?!? That SOOOOOOO nineties!”

It was back in the early ninenties that my wife and I spent a lot of time on IRC. We were mostly in the #adoption channel, looking for clues to help find her birth parents (which we did and they are now a very important part of our life). Heck, I used to join the IRC channels back on ARPANet. Anyway I hadn’t touched IRC since then… until three weeks ago.

That’s when Goldfish helped me with the SED stuff. The next night, Goldfish helped bunches more even though I was brain dead from a weary week. There were several other people on the channel who gave me assistence as well. Prec was GREAT and gave me a review of the script and caught some errors with my “Strip CR/LF” routine I’d posted on the website. They suggested that I bounce over to the #bash channel and once there lhunath, jp-_ and the rest of that crew on FreeNode #bash gave great line by line suggestions.

I then had a problem with getting System Shock2 ( a game from the late nineties) working on Windows XP and getting multiplayer going, but then I joined the #SS2 IRC channel and again, there were helpful people there with solutions. So, frankly, I’m once again an IRC fan. All thanks to the Goldfish!

Hey - if you’ve had someone help you lately (not me someone else) consider doing the same… A virtual cup of coffee, a McDonald’s icecream cone, any in expensive little gift can help turn someone’s day around. Give it some thought!

These people must be absolutely insane! I’ve jump off bridges, rafted advanced white water, free climbed 500ft in the air, gone bumsliding through rivers that have carved gouges into rock so that you just let the river push you where you will. That’s all trusting nature. Nature is dangerous in predictable ways… This is trusting something man made and makes my skin crawl…

I’m still at at work after 15 hours for the third day this week.

So I’ve been scarce lately.

I’m still trying to get time to post something about the 2.1 release and mention the fixes I put into my script…

But I obviously haven’t yet. I typed a reply two or three times to someone in the code cave’s forums (which I haven’t yet announced either) and managed each time to be pulled away onto something and ended up closing the browser…

Plus I had to take my dog in for surgery… Plus the refinance of the house is happening this week….

I’ll catch up one of these days.

RE: the script, I did fix some stuff and put it out in time for the 2.1 release. So, I got the important part done. I just need to write it up…

Hmmm also need to turn in an expense report and pay the garbage bill so they’ll pick up next week… And my nephew’s birthay is Saturday… Oh dagnabbit, it’s 30 minutes till Friday and I haven’t started Sunday school preparations… Hmmm and I’ve got to get the Goldfish some coffee…. At least that I can do tonight…

I’m fully testing my final release of the upgrade script with 2.1 and will have it all posted shortly!

It should say that test.zip is a zip file, but the if statments, which check for TAR in the file name, all return true… If I do this outside of an if statement, say at the shell prompt, it works correctly.

What is wrong with this statement:

Is there a better way to do this?

River Tam was a lovely young girl. She was smart and bright and beautiful. Her family loved her. She and her brother had a relationship that should exist between all big brothers and little sisters. Teasing was part of the written contract, but so was stepping up and taking care of anyone that would dare think of harming her.

Then when the men from the academy came and offered River a scholarship. It seemed…right.

The members of the academy tracked River’s progress at the academy. She was a bright student and was transfered into very special classes. Hundreds of special sessions were had between River and her teachers. They were very interested in her progress. Some of the video recordings of those sessions have been leaked to the Internet. I may not have them all in the right order, but here’s what I’ve found so far…

WARNING: NOT SUITIBLE FOR FAMILY CONSUMPTION. This film is licensed for public distribution.

You can read about how this video came to be here.

If you are really into the American series Lost! on the ABC network, there’s an important event happening. Do you remember when they found the first hatch? Do you remember the orientation video? Of COURSE you do! Well, do you remember where desmond kept the video? It was behind a book called “The Turn of the Screw”. That book was held centered in shot just long enough for the viewer to see the title and read the author’s name: Henry James.

Desmond said even said the title, just in case you don’t catch that the 1 second focused pause on the book cover was important:

JACK [to Locke]: Don’t tell me you believe this. This is crazy. You think that makes sense — pushing a button? You’re going to take his word for it?

LOCKE: His word is all we have, Jack.

DESMOND: You don’t have to take my word for it. Watch the film.

JACK: What?

DESMOND: The bookcase — top shelf, behind Turn of the Screw — projector’s in the pantry.

[Locke and Jack get the film. It says Orientation on the side of the film canister.]

COMMERCIAL BREAK

This novel was written in 1898, so it is public domain (at least until the Disney corp changes copyright laws AGAIN to protect their Mickey) and you can read it lots of places. This is important because J J Abrams has said that this single novel contains the complete explaination about what is happening on this island. Basicaly, it explains everything. (Sorry can’t find the source for that quote tonight. If you know it, please leave a comment. I’d like to quote him word for word here.)

I bring this to your attention because THIS SUNDAY at 1pm London time, BBC7 radio (online) is going to air “Turn of the Scew”. I am VERY eager to hear this broadcast. So I thought I would share.

This link will work for you Sunday afternoon:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/sunday/rams/1300.ram

Until then, clicking on it will give you the story One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest.

But I’m hoping this broadcast will give me some new insight.

And I just HAD to share!

IE six has an incompatiblity with this post. If you get an error, go to the next page or try Maxthon2 or FireFox.

Doug Stewart had a good post about an upcoming video game documentary about the affect of video games in our culture. In this post, I show you that movie while demonstrating the use of a WordPress Multimedia plug in. You can also read about “Moral Combat” on the Apple Pro Video site (link).

This is when it pays off. All those who downloaded and tested the EasyWPUpgrade tool can now get their monies worth! All you need to do to upgrade is log in via tellnet and type the name of the upgrade script, and in seconds you’ll have your site upgraded. Of course, you can read all about the release on the Development site: here: http://wordpress.org/development/2007/01/wordpress-207/

I was successfully able top update my five active sites, without a fuss.

Here’s a picture of the backup files it created (And yes, that file is 1.2gb in size. I do trust this for my live sites.)

You can try EasyWPUpgrade for yourself and tell me all about your experience on the The Code Cave’s forum: Did you use the The Code Cave’s EasyWPUpgrade for WP 2.0.7?

Mark Jarquith has asked for help with testing RC2. He’s looking for specific testers.

To see if you are one of the ones he is looking for, save this text as something.php:

then open it up.

If the header shows “PHP Version 4.3″ or anything less, and Server API shows CGI or FastCGI, PLEASE TEST!

If you find a variable called SERVER_SOFTWARE that shows you are running IIS, PLEASE TEST!

You can download the full package here:
http://wordpress.org/beta/wordpress-2.0.7-RC2.zip

If you are running 2.0.6 and would like only the changed files, you can download this file:
http://www.thecodecave.com/downloads/wp206to207rc2.zip
(Note that this file is relative to your blog directory and not to the root with a wordpress directory underneath it. It contains just three files. So just extract it, with paths to where your blog is installed.)

Here’s how to test:

From http://comox.textdrive.com/pipermail/wp-testers/2007-January/003644.html

To test feeds’ 304 Not Modified headers, I recommend getting the Live
HTTP Headers extension for Firefox:

http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/

A. Warming up:

1. Make sure that Firefox will display feeds (and not pipe them to
an external RSS viewer)
2. Disable any caching plugins on your site like WP-Cache
3. Upload the 2.0.7 files (no need to run an upgrade)
4. Clear your Firefox cache

B. Testing procedure:

1. Open up Live HTTP Headers (Tools > Live HTTP Headers)
2. Visit http://yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php?test=123
3. Verify that the response header for /wp-rss2.php?test=123 is 200 OK
4. Clear the Live HTTP Headers output
5. Reload the feed
6. Verify that the response header for /wp-rss2.php?test=123 is 304
Not Modified

There should be no conflicting Status: header (that is, any Status
header should match the response code of the main HTTP response header).

NOTE: The ?test=123 part is just to make sure that your first request
isn’t already cached.

Next, try basic WordPress functions like logging in, writing an
entry, writing a page, and deleting a page.

Let me know how it goes. Please include PHP version, server, and
server API (e.g. PHP 5.2/Apache/FastCGI) If you’re unsure about your
headers, paste the Live HTTP Headers output in your response, or send
me your feed’s URL to check out.

(BE SURE TO REMOVE ANY COOKIE-RELATED HEADERS! IF YOU ARE UNSURE,
SEND YOUR RESPONSE DIRECTLY TO ME)

Then report here, or on wp-testers if your feeds seem to be working correctly.

Thanks!