endperform.org

I read this article this morning and wasn’t really surprised. 49 out of 50 sites reviewed were not running the latest Wordpress, and I honestly see why. There are a lot of bloggers out there that aren’t technically inclined, so once they have something installed, they tend to let it go. It’s no fault of their own, tech is just not their thing. Anyway, if you are running Wordpress, I do urge you to keep up with the updates. It’s a good thing, trust me.

Well, Wordpress is running happily at version 2.1.2 now. I did have to eliminate one plugin, upgrade a few others, and replace the archives plugin I was using, but otherwise it’s running fine. I need to look into another theme since I’m itching to change it up again. Seems like 2007 is going to be the year of change for me, and I’m ok with that.

Last night I hooked up the old myth/fileserver so I could pull some files off of it. I don’t think I’m going to have a machine running 24×7 anymore since I don’t really have a need for it. I switched the desktop over to Ubuntu for good this before I moved down here, so now I don’t have to worry about leaving it on overnight to complete an update. The laptop is also on Ubuntu, and is pretty much my main machine, given the fact that I can game with it without an issue. I just need to reload some games on it and I’ll be all set.

This weekend marks my first official week living down here. So far, so good, except for the out of place feelings I still have once in a while. Those are quickly going away though. After work tonight I’m going down to pick up Bethany so she can stay with me over the weekend. I can’t wait for her to see the apartment. I have a feeling we’ll be out running around for a good part of the weekend, trying to get a handle on where things are and how to get around.

After moving into the apartment over the weekend, I had a service appointment set up with Comcast to get my cable and internet set up. The cable TV portion of the program went off without an issue, but the cable modem was another story. The guy left the modem with me so I could finish things up using their ‘lovely’ self install software. Well, after messing with it, I came up with a 403 error. And thus began my frustration with Comcast GA.

I made a call into the tech support line and they went through the usual crap they go through: “Is the modem plugged in? Is it connected to a router?”. The funny part about all of this is that the modem was giving me a Comcast IP address and seemed to be okay, but on their end they could not do anything with the modem. Off to level 2 support. I called back in to find that they think it’s a hardware issue. After about 30 minutes of dealing with a tech, they decide they need to send a technician out to look at my setup. Yesterday, the tech comes in and checks things out. Things look fine. He calls in and they talk back and forth. Eventually, they figure out that there was a configuration issue on their end, and one little change had me online. Makes me wish they’d check that stuff out first. On the bright side, though, the net setup seems nice and fast, and I was able to get online.

Tonight I can finally get Wordpress upgraded. I may also go with a theme change while I’m at it, if I can find one I like.

I managed to do a bit of geeking around this weekend, mostly involving my modded Xbox. I updated all of the software on it, and it’s running fine and dandy. I really dig the new version of Xbox Media Center, and I was pretty surprised to find that there is support for Python scripting. I might have to check that out. Additionally, I’ve acquired a new machine to replace my old PIII server / myth backend. I’m probably going to be working on that this week. The machine is going to take over myth (both frontend and backend) and samba duties. I don’t really use the internal webserver that much anymore, other than for statistical purposes of the server itself, so I may or may not set that back up.

In gaming news, remember this post I made concerning Vista? Seems like John Carmack agrees with my assessment:

Nothing is going to help a new game by going to a new operating system. There were some clear wins going from Windows 95 to Windows XP for games, but there really aren’t any for Vista. They’re artificially doing that by tying DX10 so close it, which is really nothing about the OS … They’re really grasping at straws for reasons to upgrade the operating system. I suspect I could run XP for a great many more years without having a problem with it.

Check out the full article for more information, but it’s good to know I’m not the only one taking notice to this. As I mentioned previously, it’s really up to the game developers as to what technology they use, but here’s to hoping that they stick with DirectX 9 for a while. Granted, these days I’m more of a console / handheld gamer than a PC gamer, but it still bugs me a bit that MS can just say, “Oh, well the newest DX will be on our new OS, and it alone!”. How convenient.

I loaded up Rockbox onto my iPod to give it a spin and see how well it worked. I must say, so far so good. It’s working out nice, and the best feature I like is the themes. It’s nice to have something other than that dull white to look at, and it’s also a way to make my iPod a bit different from others. Another cool feature is the fact that I don’t need to use amaroK or iTunes to load music onto the player anymore. All I have to do is just copy music to the iPod and away I go. The only downside is that I lose the video capabilities, although honestly I haven’t used them that much anyway.

Installation wasn’t too hard, and the instructions on the website were very easy to follow. I backed up the original firmware to my USB key in case I want to go back (which I may do if I decide to sell and go the Nano route). I left the music I had loaded on the iPod and by using the Rockbox database functionality, I was able to browse the collection like I could with the default software. I may opt to clean up the drive and just put the music on in the directory structure I have now to be consistent.