Category Archives: Diagnostic Reports

Level 1 diagnostic reports on website operations.

A Few Quick Notes…

A Few Quick Notes…

Some stuff! I did it today! Read!

  1. Google has developed an online font api thing that lets you use fonts that aren’t even on your computer machine on your website. They had the Droid font available, so I just converted the site to use that instead of Trebuchet or whatever the hell I was using before. Isn’t a trebuchet some kind of medieval siege weapon? I think it threw rocks like a catapult or something. That’s a stupid name for a font.
  2. Cat!
  3. So it turns out I should have previewed what the site looked like before I started writing point number 1 up there. Seems like the Droid font gets a bit cut off no matter what size I make it. Letters like g and y have their little tails chopped off, and we can’t have that! Aside from the humanitarian reasons, it just looks faintly ridiculous. So back to Trebuchet or whatever the hell it was before. Boo!
  4. I’ve had Symphony of Science on repeat for the past few days. I’ll be writing a follow up post to that shortly. Possibly even today!
  5. I just found my eMusic gift cards from before they redid their pricing structure to include 100% more suck. I’ll have to redeem these things and violate their site before they expire.
  6. It’s totally a lazy Sunday today, but I’m going to see if I can get both of my pending candy bar reviews done today. Also I have to look into the Picassa thing for this site.
  7. I need more days off!

My site is naked!

My site is naked!

OK, so I don’t know what the hell just happened, but I hit mytwistedmind.net to login to post an update and I see that the theme that I’ve been using for quite some time is gone. Its just the default WordPress theme and it’s acting like my Dark City theme was never there. This causes me a certain amount of… RAGEFACE!

I don’t even remember what I was logging in to post.

Excuse me while I address this tomfoolery.

Productivity!

Productivity!

Wow, I haven’t been this prolific (if such a word can be used to describe such a small quantity) since November of 2006. That was the last time I had this many posts in one month. I’m going to have to pick up the pace for next month if I want this site to be something more than a place where I check in approximately once a year to register the fact that yes, I am in fact alive. I’m about to set to work on my 2 remaining absurdly overdue reviews for Ask the Fatty. After that, I think I’m going to (finally!) complete my picture galleries here on My Twisted Mind and also see what I can do in terms of either mirroring them on Picassa’s web albums or integrating that on the site somehow. The reason I’m looking at Picassa is because of the Android integration. I found out, quite by accident, that pictures in Picassa’s web galleries show up as if they were pictures native to my phone when I access it’s picture gallery option. They’re separated out into their own category, but show up automatically without me having to do any configuration or tweaking. It’s pretty sweet.

Can I tell you how much I love my Droid? I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but I just can’t get over how awesome this thing is. I’ve most recently been playing with apps that alter the home screen of the Droid. After seeing how the Nexus One has 2 more home screen to fill with app icons than the Droid, I knew I had to find some way to replicate this functionality on the Droid. A quick Google search found me a couple of alternative home screens that let you take your home screens up to 9. (How awesome would it be if it went up to 11 though?) They have varying features and some work better than others. Most of the forum threads I found about these programs talked about people using them for 2 weeks before making a decision, though to be honest, I can’t imagine how. About half of the suggested programs either gave me grief when trying to set them up and then acted sluggish every time I tried to use them. Worse yet, they crashed (or “force closed” in Android terms) seemingly at random. All but one of them had an extra row of pre-set icons on either side of the app drawer that you couldn’t customize. There was one that didn’t suffer from these limitations. It’s called TagHome and it’s awesome. It’s not foolishly sluggish, it didn’t present any setup problems, it’s bottom icon row is totally customizable, and it has an indicator to tell you which screen you’re on. And it goes up to nine. That’s right, NINE! Not that I’ll need that many, but it’s nice to have. It’s interface is also the closest to the stock Android interface, which I happen to quite like.

Right now, it’s time for dinner, ice cream, then to work on website fun times. A sea monster had better not have eaten my ice cream.

Still diseased

Still diseased

A quick post today, brought to you by the last few minutes of my lunch. I’m still feeling blah, but I’m at work because I do feel better somewhat and I don’t want to use any more sick time this year unless I really need it. I can’t wait to go home today for many reasns which I’ll elaborate on further since I gotta head back to work.

Rageface!

Rageface!

}:(

So I’ve been waiting for a particular domain to propagate through the net’s DNS servers. I thought to myself “Man, this is taking a while. You know, this may be taking a bit too long.” So I thought, let me try switching to a DNS server other than the one my ISP uses. I tried Google’s Public DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 in case you’re interested) and it didn’t resolve there either. Curiouser and curiouser. Did a name server lookup (in windows command prompt: nslookup -debug yourdomain.com) and found that oh look, the DNS records are actually point to Dreamhost like they’re supposed to. So what gives? What’s going on? I think something curled up and died on Dreamhost’s end when I tried to set up the full hosting for the domain. I’m going to park the domain, and then set it back to full hosting to see if I can’t get it unstuck. Surely my cunning plan cannot fail!

If it does fail, I’ll just e-mail tech support because I don’t know if I’ll be able to kick start things at my end. Curse you server errors! You’ve cost me valuable time in which I could have been hilarious!

An unlikely muse

An unlikely muse

I didn’t think my co-worker’s boyfriend would be a source of inspiration for hilarious misdeeds such as I am prone to, but it just goes to show you that you can never be too sure where your next set of shenanigans is going to come from. Set of shenanigans… do shenanigans come in sets? If I do something filled with tomfoolery, am I engaging in a single shenanigan? Come to think of it, I’ve never heard anyone use the singular form of shenanigans, like ever. It’s always “What sort of idiot shenanigans are you up to?” or “What’s the deal with all these shenanigans?!” They always seem to come in some plural form. I guess set of shenanigans would be ok.

But I digress.

So Mike, you’ve caused me to start something here, something that may well end in tears (but will more than likely end in me undoing my last year’s weight loss, which will subsequently lead to tears), and I place any and all blame directly at your feet, sir! How do you sleep at night?! MONSTER!

So anyway, it looks as if we’re still in the propagation stage of things. Maybe another day or two and I can start doing some backend work and design. When this thing goes live, its going to be SO AWESOME.

Bliggity blogs, facey spaces, and tweety pages

Bliggity blogs, facey spaces, and tweety pages

I think I may well be one of the cool kids now. I’ve had this bliggity blog since Nornan only knows when, but just recently, I got myself a facey space and a tweety page too. And wouldn’t you know it, the tweety page has a whatsadoodle that makes all of these three things link together in some arcane and black magic way. (OK, so what it really does is just display my last 4 Twitter updates on my blog and Facebook wall, but considering it took about 12 seconds to set up said integration, it may as well be black magic.) You know, I should probably get on writing up that Electric Zoo trip. And resurrecting the pre-2004 archives. And rounding out the beatstick section. If people are going to come look at this place, the cobwebs should be cleared away, right? Man, social interaction is hard! 🙁

On a sort of related note, I heard from an old school member of The NORN Collective not too long ago. It was TOTALLY AWESOME! So many fond memories from those days! All because I started a cult participated in an early form of social networking.

Hey, is that what all this social interaction stuff is? I can totally do that! 😀

Yeah… so that happened

Yeah… so that happened

So how long has it been. Look at that, a year to the day! By merest coincidence I was trying to connect to my site to check my internet connection and noticed the date on my last post. Oops. I had all these plans too! I wonder how many blog posts across the internet consists of “OMGWTFBBQ I haven’t updated in forever! I will update more frequently from now on!” Cause I mean, there’s a lot of abandoned blogs out there, right? I almost feel like there should be roaches crawling out of the links on the page like in Animal Crossing when you move the furniture around and they pop out and then you have to run around and stomp them and then they turn into these little Pac-Man-esque ghosts when you succeed.

I wonder what my login is for my gallery2 install.

Oops.

Weeeeeeee!

Weeeeeeee!

New template! I like this one and I think I’ll keep it for a while.

Also, for those of you playing the home game, the plan I mentioned in my previous post is proceeding, slowly for now. Seeds are being planted and information gathered. Things will begin in earnest when I return from my much needed trip to Soviet Montanastan.

In other news, I’ve gotten my lusty hands on Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. This is an amazing game. Go look at Metacritic or similar sites if you want a professional review. If I were to review it, it would be a mostly incoherent raving over the graphics, the controls, the story, and the scope and expanse of the game. I <3 it so much, I cannot begin to express my joy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve some space pirates to ventilate.