Category: Cooking With Code

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Cooking With Code Music

The worst podcast ever…

… has been made by me, and you can enjoy (or, perhaps more appropriately, endure) it here. It’s just me playing some music that I liked from last year. Unfortunately, it’s also me rambling on without a script, “ah”-ing and “um”-ing a lot, and sounding like deep fried crap because my allergies were giving me trouble that day. (The whole thing was recorded several weeks ago, but honestly, I’ve been sitting on it since then and pondering whether or not it would be possible for me to make it suck less. Ultimately I decided the answer was “probably not, this is me we’re talking about here.”) … Read more

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Cooking With Code

The hostest without the mostest

Pizza and bail bonds? WHERE DO WE SIGN UP AS INVESTORS?As I write this, my FTP client is firing an enormous amount of stuff at a server which will hopefully, in very short order, become the new home of my website.

It’s ironic that, in a year in which I’ve made such a big honkin’ deal about some of the site’s core content being 20 years old, and having been on the web for over 10 years (and at the same domain name for exactly 10 as of Memorial Day weekend), my site, which I’ll admit may well be celebrated this much only by its owner, has spent so much time being DOWN.

After spending a good deal of May fending off repeated hacking attempts, I held my breath as my hosting service sent out an e-mail to announce that they have new owners and management. I was hoping for some improvement – Globat.com (my web host since late 2003) had been steadily going downhill, with the most frustrating incidation of that in recent years being the tendency for their database server to collapse under even fairly mild loads of activity. As theLogBook.com has increasingly become a database-driven site (for the better, in my opinion), this was more than a little bit unacceptable.

I turns out that the new management and technical teams are, in fact, a step down from where Globat already was. I think these people were unfrozen from 2002 or something: their .htaccess defaults (which govern how your site can be accessed and by whom) was hardwired to favor Microsoft Frontpage, a web authoring platform that even Microsoft has stopped supporting. Additionally, their CHMOD settings – basically, the security level of your files and directories, governing who can write/change stuff – is hardwired to a setting of 777: in effect, anyone can change just about anything on your site. When you’ve been fighting off as many hacks as I have for the past month, this is so far beyond unacceptable that the light from unacceptable will take four billion years to shine on me.

The final straw? In an attempt to fix my blog, Globat apparently toasted the database. It’s gone. The post I wrote from the hospital on the night my son was born, and the accompanying congratulations from my friends? Gone. There is a backup, but it’s fairly old – thankfully, my blog posts have been automatically mirrored in two places (Facebook and Livejournal), so I can cut-and-paste missing entries back in once I get things set up at the new hosting service.

I’m incredibly impressed with the new place; not only was the price right, but the options and amenities are mind-blowing, and they go out of their way to show you how to do stuff, including migrating your site and databases from another site. It sure beats the hell out of unreadable-going-on-cryptic “support tickets” written in some sub-dialect of Engrish.

My site is not only one of my proudest (and certainly longest-lived) achievements, but it’s also a vital cog in my attempts to support my family and myself. With the site down and even my e-mail inaccessible, not only is no money being made, but I can’t even solicit future business or sell stuff I’ve already made. It’s having a tangible impact, not having the site working.

So it’s without much of a heavy heart that I plan to bid farewell to Globat very soon. If nothing else, I think the upgrade will be a fitting 20th birthday present for the old thing.

I’ll have more updates soon; for the moment, there’s a massive amount of files to move in order to make the whole thing work. Do not adjust your set.… Read more

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Cooking With Code Home Base

Plague update

Excuse me, I seem to have died!A little update from the plague house: my diagnosis was a nasty sinus infection …plus strep throat. This basically translates to “get the toddler and anyone else who isn’t a cat way the hell away from me.” The “alpha site” has turned out to be the in-laws’ place, so I’m sitting here with Olivia and Oberon, with occasional visits from the dog during bad weather. Supposedly we get a break from that weather over the next week – a pity I don’t feel like getting back out there and tackling the lawn (on the other hand, when I still have no appetite and my body temperature fluctuates between freezing and a brain-boiling near-104-degree fever, I’m not sure how trying to mow could actually significantly increase my physical discomfort).

For some reason I’m totally jonesing for Dr. Pepper right now. Not sugar free, not caffiene free, just good old Dr. Pepper, that same stuff that’s two molecular bonds away from being antifreeze. It’s the only thing that tastes “right” to me right now.

I really miss my kid, but I understand he’s having a blast at his grandparents’ place, and can already call all of their kitties by name (and they have twice as many kitties as we do here, and many more doggies!). He’s being a little angel over there. But I’ll be more than happy to have him back over here.

I completely skipped one week’s worth of update on theLogBook this week because I’ve been going around and hack-proofing – to the best of my ability – the various WordPress installs that make up the site. I’ve really about had it up to here with the explots and script hacks – I keep my WP isntalls up to date, but sometimes it just seems to have the security coverage of a mesh shirt from the ’70s. WordPress is becoming common/popular enough to be the de facto hack magnet – a position shared by phpBB and Windows/Internet Explorer. I’m not sure I’m crazy about that. I spent most of last night un-junking Phil’s 365 Films A Year blog after getting a Google warning about it via e-mail, and most of that “most of last night” was trying to unbreak the damage I did trying to fix it. :embarrassed: (Sorry, Phil.)

I’ll see if I can get it back in gear for an update on time this week. It seems like any time I put my foot down and say “this is the month where theLogBook.com is going to start kicking ass again” is precisely when it manages to avoid happening at all costs.

Back to the doctor’s office: my wife got us both in for appointments at a new doctor’s office, and apparently we’ve both been thinking the same thing without discussing it: we need a new “doctor of record.” With no disrespect intended toward the doctor we have been seeing for the past 2-3 years, because it’s someone who has put in their time over the years, but it seemed increasingly as though our old doctor was more interested in the golf course of late. Appointments were hard to get, and sometimes, it seemed, only begrudgingly given. This is why I’d been avoiding seeing that doctor for the past year-and-a-half and going instead to a walk-in clinic where one of the staff doctors is one of my best friends from elementary school (!). So finally it seems that we’re looking at this place as the new home base for medical needs…which suits me just fine, because the nurses are just hellaciously cute. Even the one who gave me shots in my butt, including one with a huge needle that was left in for so long that I thought she was drilling for core samples of ancient Antarctic ass-tundra or something. (But I kid – I’m sure having to stick needles in my fat butt was hardly the highlight of her day.)

Anyway, I’m on a whole cocktail of meds right now, including, for the first time in my life, an inhaler. I’m feeling kind of woozy, but a little bit better. I found out very early on that taking all of the meds right on top of each other was a very bad idea – we’re talking hearing-the-soundtrack-from-Heavy-Metal-inside-your-brain, effed-up bad idea. (And no, it didn’t work like “cheesing” on that South Park episode, else I’d be taking the meds like that all the time!)

That’s all I have to report. I have to go break up a fight between the only other two living creatures in the house. Bye bye.… Read more

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Cooking With Code

Extreme blog makeover

I think the realization that something was terribly wrong kicked in about the third time I went to log into my own blog and had a virus thrown at me. Yet another WordPress theme had been compromised (a good indication that it’s the theme: if you change themes and the same URL is suddenly harmless, it’s the theme).

This happened earlier in the year with another part of my site, and as with that incident, I tried to find a new theme quickly, customize it quickly, and tried very hard – and, might I add, quickly – to get it up and running so the two or three people who do visit the blog (as opposed to reading the entries that are shuttled to Facebook or Livejournal via RSS) wouldn’t be infected (and infected quickly).

Scribblings From The Public Restroom Stalls Of The GodsThis is the result – the whole thing suddenly looks impossibly slick, and there’s a very cool persistent nav bar that stays at the bottom of the screen at all times. I had to do some work on it to get certain things to format the way they did in the previous theme, but overall, I’m beyond pleased.

It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between minor customization and wholesale rewriting of code. The previous WordPress theme I was using as called “Nine”, and I loved the look of it – but it arrived in a hobbled state (with no indication that there was a working version that one needed to pay for), so I had to do some considerable recoding on it. Whether that left it in a vulnerable state, or whether “Nine” was defenseless to begin with, I don’t know. In the meantime, it’s back to business as normal. Cruise by and give it a look-see; I’ve also put the new theme on my TV work archive blog, which also used “Nine” (but showed no signs of having been hacked).

The new theme’s got some really cool crap in it – check out the little pencil icon in the lower left corner. You can change the background image (and, accordingly, the entire color scheme) to suit your tastes. That feature doesn’t really add anything mission-critical, but damned if it isn’t cool.

Sorry for the interruption, you two or three folks out there. I also hereby extend a defiant middle finger – no, make that two – at the script kiddies out there who really need a life. Enjoy!… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code Critters Funny Stuff

New look

theLogBook.com's new look - February 2009As part of the fun going on for theLogBook.com’s 20th anniversary, virtually the entire site has gotten a nice little facelift. The code’s a little tighter, and so help me, the look might just be a little cleaner. There are still some minor tweaks to be made, so if you find anything broken, let me know.

Looks like we get an extra smidgeon of the Whoniverse next month: there’s a Sarah Jane Adventures skit planned as part of Red Nose Day (the same charity telethon that brought us The Curse Of Fatal Death ten years ago) in March, guest starring K-9 and none other than Ronnie Corbett. An “old enemy” is also promised. Fun times.

Evan made out like a bandit at his day care’s Valentine’s Day – he came home with heaps of goodies (including some chocolates addressed from Evan to mom!), including some additions to the stuffed horsie collection. I guess that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that we set in motion: Evan gets a blankie horse, he takes it with him to day care, and therefore the assumption is “Evan loves horses!” Well, if he doesn’t now, he probably will before too long…not to fear, there’ll probably still be plenty for him to hang out with at the farm. Sundays will probably become a day that Evan wants me to wake up ASAP so he can go watch me feed horses. Oh boy!

But Evan doesn’t have to leave home to get his four-legged lovin’. … Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code

So this is 2009

2009 has begun…with a barfing little boy. Hopefully this is just a 24 hour stomach bug or something that he caught at day care (which he started this week, doing part-days). The poor little guy has no energy at all. He’s breaking daddy’s heart. And making daddy do lots of laundry.

I’ve done a slight revamp of the front page of the site, including adding this little piece on where theLogBook.com gets off claiming to be 20 years old this year. I’ll admit, it’s a bit of a technicality – theLogBook.com is 10 years old this year, but the LogBook is 20. I gave up really making the distinction long ago, so there it is – my web site, or at least the material that led up to it, is two decades old. I’m not sure if it’s a cause for celebration or a cause for “dude, I would’ve given up on that ages ago”…but I’d rather deal with it as a celebration for obvious reasons!

I’m assuming that everyone who had any interest in doing so is still suffering through the podcast; I listened to a little bit of it late last night and kinda hated the sound of my voice. But that’s nothing new. Hopefully the decent music compensates for that! 😛

Have a good year; hopefully Evan will be feeling better soon.… Read more