Category: Website

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Old Site

My 3 year free hosting at 1&1 expired a few days ago and originally I wasn’t planning on extending the service. I already have my own paid domain and web hosting service at Dreamhost and didn’t think it was necessary to have 2. Plus if I recall correctly, 1&1 was charging $10/mo for a pretty cheap service (1gb of space and 5gb of bandwidth/month). However, the 1&1 thread in B$ became active again as people began to ask what to do now that their 1&1 account was expiring.

For those who wanted a cheap service, I suggested E-RICE which is $10/yr and I heard the service is good and reliable. For those who can’t afford to have any downtime, I suggested to just stay with 1&1 because the price was actually $3.99/mo and that’s not too bad. For $48/yr and reliable service, it’s a decent deal.

I’ve been meaning to port over my old site’s blog entries into WordPress, but never really got the time. If you look at my archives, you can tell that I’ve started as there’s a few months of 2002 in there. Initially I was hoping to port all my entries before my account expires, but then I got lazy. I do have everything backed up (all my files, my databases, etc). Now that I find out it’s not $10/mo, but just $3.99/mo, I thought why not just extend my contract.

Someone on the thread mention about the $2.99/month Hosting Beginner plan. I had seen this plan initially, but thought it wasn’t that great. The space and bandwidth were more than my current plan, but I must’ve misread it because I thought this plan had no databases (i.e. MySQL) and even my old blog ran on a database. But apparently it comes with 10 databases and has 10GB of space and 300GB of bandwith/month (vs 1GB and 5GB respectively), and for $1 cheaper, it seemed like the obvious choice.

I began searching around their FAQ to find out how to downgrade, if possible. I found this:

DOWNGRADES
You can downgrade a package by contacting support at support@1and1.com
or call support at 1 877 435 7281

I shot them a email and they approved my downgrade. Apparently, it’s the same process as canceling where you goto https://cancel.1and1.com and began a cancellation process. After you select the plan you want to cancel, it gives you a choice of cancellation or switch to another plan. I tried to switch to another plan but was given an error that I’m not allowed to switch plans within 30 days of switching (which I’m guessing they’re counting my FREE to $3.99/mo switch). I shot another email to support asking what to do and within a couple hours, I was able to switch. It actually gave me a whole bunch of choices, but I had already decided which plan I wanted a long time ago. Do note, they have to approve your downgrade/upgrade before you can do this process. I know because I canceled another account earlier and the choice of downgrading/upgrading wasn’t available.

Another cool thing about the $2.99/month plan is that it comes with a free domain. I have finally completed my TRIO:

krunk4ever.com
krunk4ever.net
krunk4ever.org

http://www.krunk4ever.net currently just points to my old blog. I no longer have to remember this awful URL: http://s86952823.onlinehome.us. I’ve also decided it was a good time to add some ads to it. I don’t really know how much traffic my old site gets, but why not make some money off of it while I’m in there mucking around.

One thing I did noticed was I no longer had shell access. My 1&1 was my first web hosting company that provided shell access which was really neat and really useful if you know what you’re doing. However, with the downgraded plan, I noticed shell access is now disabled. Not really a big deal for me since I don’t plan to do much more development on this site, but if my main site was located on this server, I would definitely need shell access.

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Free International Phone Calls

You’ve probably heard of AllFreeCalls and Future Phone where you call some number in Iowa and make free long distance calls. They make their money with a new law that all incoming calls are charged a few cents and then just pipe you over the VoIP network. It’s been brought to my notice that Future Phone is no longer available. I also found it funny that they have a big red sign across their homepage saying: THIS SERVICE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. However AllFreeCalls is still going strong and getting more people everyday.

I was thinking… with Google Maps’ Click to Call feature Windows Live’s Call for free feature, we can have free calls and not pay long distance to Iowa. I’m assuming that AllFreeCalls will still get paid since it’s still considered an incoming call and even more people will start to use this service.

I’ve always considered these features to sort of be like Jajah, where Jajah initiates the call to both ends and therefore is the one paying the toll. Google and Windows Live just supports it for businesses, and well, AllFreeCalls is considered a business. If they decide to add their listing to Google Maps or Windows Live, it’s basically free calls for everyone.

Random Crap:

I’m thinking, given that I tend to write multiple entries in one sitting and not write anything for a few days, I’m going to start queuing them up. Meaning, I’ll still be writing multiple entries in one setting, but I’ll change the publish date instead of immediate to a day or 2 later. That way it won’t be like reading 5 posts of random crap in 1 day vs reading 5 random crap posts over period of 5 days.

Also wanted to wish GwaGwaSan and Mister0124 a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Product Placement (from Digg) – news article headline shows: Teacher hit by car outside Queens school and then there’s a pop up ad for Toyota. ;p

The Best Homework Ever? (from Digg) – Cassidy Curtis’s marvelous surface drawings Those drawings are rather neat. Reminds me of Mechy.

Iowa students get laundry e-mail alerts – Ding! Time to throw your drawers in the dryer. That’s the message University of Iowa students can now receive by e-mail. Thanks to software installed along with new high-efficiency washers last fall, the school’s dormitory residents can receive e-mail alerts when their laundry cycles have finished. I wished this was available back when I was in college. Usually I remember to go down to get my clothes, but once in awhile, I don’t remember until the next day.

Artist to honour Wii heroes with statuettes – In the old days, heroes were commemorated with stone statues in public squares. In today’s video game obsessed society, players can get a Mii. U.S. artist Paul Thiel is crafting figurines that are replicas of the virtual characters users of Nintendo’s popular console Wii play games with. Neat! If you have a Mii that really resembles you, I can see this being a totally awesome gift.

Web site helps name that tune in your head – You know that annoying tune that you can’t place or get out of your head? A U.S. company has recently launched a Web site, www.midomi.com, that names most tunes that you can hum, sing or whistle a tune into your computer microphone. If you give this a try, do let me know if it works.

Man bets wife in card game, loses – A Russian man lost his wife in a game of cards after putting her up as a stake instead of cash. … When he lost the game and his opponent Sergey Brodov turned up to claim his winnings his wife Tatiana was so angry she decided to divorce her husband and started a relationship with Brodov. Haha! Awesome way to get rid of your wife. 😉

One Year Later, Quadruple Amputee Still Wants Answers (from Digg) – A local woman went to the hospital to have a baby, and while she was there, she contracted a flesh-eating bacteria, WESH 2 News reported. Doctors had to amputate both her arms and both her legs to save her. That was one year ago, and she’s still searching for answers. Such a sad story… If I was her, I’d like some answers too!

Pink milk puzzles farmer – A farmer whose cows produced pink milk after eating carrots solved the problem by feeding them white carrots instead. Pink milk reminds me of strawberry milk.

Why can’t a person tickle himself? (from Digg) – . Our studies at University College London have shown that the cerebellum can predict sensations when your own movement causes them but not when someone else does. When you try to tickle yourself, the cerebellum predicts the sensation and this prediction is used to cancel the response of other brain areas to the tickle. Ahhh! So that’s the key to not being ticklish!

That’s an ad on your egg – Which came first — the chicken or the ad? In a month-long campaign that began in Japan on Thursday, 1.8-cm (0.8-inch) advertising stickers touting chicken ramen instant noodles will be stuck on the shells of ordinary eggs, sold in packs of 10. Updated the link that has an image of it.

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More and more junk

Sigh… My blog entries are queuing up faster than I can blog:

Your Drafts: Unknown, Open Season, The Queen, Blood Diamond, An Evening With Kevin Smith 2 – Evening Harder, The Corporation, Kanon, Poseidon, Hacking Democracy, Accepted, Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, 黑社會 (Election), DragonZakura, Superman Returns, L.A. Confidential, Cars, The Science of Sleep, The Departed, ゼロの使い魔, Sneakers, The Notebook, Little Miss Sunshine, The Triplets Of Belleville, Love Actually, Transamerica, Two for the Money, Thumbsucker, When Do We Eat, The Sentinel, Who Killed the Electric Car?, The Benchwarmers, Basic Instinct 2, Sympathy for Lady Venegance, Saving Electricity, Food Scarcity, xxxHOLiC, Blood+, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Episodes, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Episodes 1 – 8, Temperature Scales, Black Cat, REC, Fate/stay night, Bleach Episode 71 – 83, Hellsing Ultimate OVA, Detective Academy Q Episodes 31 – 39, Dial Tone, Monster Episodes 66 – 74, Initial D Fourth Stage Episodes 21 – 24, 24 – Season Four, Full Metal Panic – The Second Raid Episodes 9-13, Naruto Episode 150 .

Every time I think of something or watch a movie, I just create a new draft post and enter the title and any little details I don’t want to forget. Then it just starts piling up. I’ve pretty much given up on posting a blog for each anime episode. If I feel like it, I’d have entries on certain episodes that really stood out, or I’d blog about once I complete the series.

Random Crap:

Mysterious samurai saves Police in UK (from Digg) – A samurai sword wielding vigilante has come to the rescue of two Police officers when they were attacked by an armed gang in South Shields, England. Could it be a Hiro wannabe? I’m curious what the guy dressed like, or if they just labeled him as “a samurai” because he was wielding a curved sword. Who knows if the sword was even curved…

h&r block refund Freudian slip
H&R Block’s Freudian Slip (from The Consumerist)

It’s estimated Americans overpaid their taxes by nearly a billion dollars.* Don’t be one of them. H&R Block will get you the maximum refund you’re entitled to, or your tax preparation is FREE. So every dollar you’ve earned is where it belongs. In our pocket.

It’s funny how much a difference a ‘y’ would make in this case.

Netflix offers streaming movies to subscribers –

The new service will be rolled out gradually but should be available to all Netflix subscribers by July. The amount of video that can be watched on the PC varies depending on the subscription plan. Users with the $5.99 plan will get six hours of online viewing each month, while those with the more common $17.99 plans get 18 hours. The decision to offer this in terms of “hours” rather than “movies” could potentially frustrate customers who don’t want to wait until next month to see the second half of Casino Royale, but it does allow for stopping, starting, and switching films without developing some convoluted definition of what it means to “watch a film.”

The initial selection is fairly thin, with only 1,000 titles available (out of more than 70,000 available on DVD), but this was the same number of DVDs that Netflix launched with back in 1999. It’s probably just as well; Netflix has made clear that they want to roll out the new technology slowly to make sure that everything works correctly. As CEO Reed Hastings notes, this isn’t a market that is going to pay big dividends for a few years yet.

A rather interesting service. From the feedback I’ve read, the quality’s really good, almost as good as DVD quality, though I’d believe it when I see it. Then again, DVD quality is only 480p and I’ve been spoiled with 720p and 1080p content recently. I’d like to see how far this goes and how big it can become. Maybe I’ll cave and get a Netflix subscription.

Male panda said too fat to have sex – Chuang Chuang the Panda is just too heavy to have sex. Thai authorities have put him on a strict diet as part of a long-running campaign to get him to mate with female partner Lin Hui at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand. Haha.

Are You Gonna Do It? (from Digg) – “I’ll just walk into Steve’s office, pull down my pants, and urinate on his desk. What could he say to that? It’s guaranteed to work.” We laughed, thinking that not even Burrell would have the guts to do that. … “Are you gonna do it? Are you really gonna do it?”, asked Steve. Somehow, word about the urination threat had gotten back to Steve, and he was genuinely curious if Burrell would go through with it or not. I was disappointed he didn’t do it.

My Kids Are Perverted (NSFW) (from Tera) – Hilarious story of what the kids keep asking this teacher. Since it’s not safe for work, you’ll have to click the show button. (Show)

Jeep® Waterfall (from Digg) – From Detroit to Beijing, the Jeep Waterfall has mesmerized auto showgoers from across the globe. Tune in to discover how this H20 wonder works. Amazing piece of engineering. Apparently you can drive this waterfall/rainfall as if it was an inkjet printer. Rather interesting.

Boy, 9, sneaks on to plane (from The Consumerist) – Police in Lakewood, Washington, say the boy (Semaj Booker) has a history of stealing cars and running away from home. He was apparently trying to get to Dallas, where his grandfather lives, and where the boy himself used to live. But he came up short, only getting as far as San Antonio after hopping two separate flights. Police say he apparently found a Southwest Airlines boarding card and made it through airport security. I really wonder if airport security really exists, or is it just their to inconvenience people like us.

Porsche – Double Take (from Derek) – An interesting ad, but it does show where a car’s *cough* is.

Life Lessons (from SD) – A bunch of figurines being sold by TLC with rather funny sayings. Like #20 If you want to get rid of a guy,tell him you love him. Or #58 – Never introduce her as “my future ex.”

Punchy! (from RayAlome) – It’s all fun and games until someone gets punched in the face. And then it’s even more fun! Funny skit where some guy can’t control punching people in the face.

The Towel Trick fixes 360’s? (from MS newsgroup) – Everyone’s dreaded the red circle that appears on your Xbox 360 to notify you it’s broken. Recently, there’s been a spread of the “towel trick” and apparently many people who’ve gotten the red circle of death are claiming it fixes their Xbox 360. What you do is wrap your Xbox 360 completely in a towel (basically enclosing the whole thing) and turn it on and wait 10-15 minutes. At this time, your Xbox 360 will get really hot, and I mean REALLY HOT. Turn it off and turn it back on and your machine might magically work. No one really knows why this is fixing their Xbox 360s, but CDMCC suggests that it might have to do with the soldering problem.

College Saga – Episode 1 (from Cari) – Once upon a time, when Earth was still a beautiful place, an evil force came to turn all living things into Vegetarians. Three students from suburban Massachusetts would step up against this catastrophe… to end Vegetarian Supremacy. Mark, Jesús, Maria and their foes would make amazing personal discoveries as the two forces clash. And so began the ultimate saga about friendship, heritage, sex and explosions. A hilarious skit done by a group of college students, where they go through college as if it was a RPG game.

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Upgraded to WordPress 2.0.7

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.0.7. You can download the latest version here. I’ve been due an update for quite sometime. Given all the security fixes they’ve had since 2.0.1, I guess I’ve been lucky my site hasn’t been hacked yet. If you need help upgrading WordPress, please follow the instructions from: Upgrading WordPress.

First thing you should always do is backup everything, including your database and your files. Since I’ve modified a few things outside the wp-content area, I was lucky to have backups of previous files to figure what changes I made.

If anyone notices any problem with the site, please let me know. Thanks!

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Cascada?

What’s with my Cascada post?!?! It’s received almost 2,500 viewings so far, while 2nd place hasn’t even reached 200. I have been getting a lot of spam comments on that particular post and my stats are showing “Cascada” as one of the main keywords from search engines coming to my site, but I don’t particularly see anything special about that post. I wish there was a feature in search engines that would let you do a query and pass in a link and it’ll tell you which result # you are. That’d be neat!

I think I found out why so many people are visiting my page searching for “Cascada”. Apparently Google’s image search returns me as result #19 on page 1.

Random Crap:

Today’s Japanese term is 首飾り (kubikazari) which means necklace.

Body-wired headphones – The new system uses the listener’s body as a capacitor that carries a tiny electrostatic charge. A music or video player sends a fluctuating signal to a conductive cloth pad – such as a wrist band – and this slightly charges the wearer’s body. A pair of conductive ear pads in the headphones pick-up the signal and rapidly convert it back into sound. Neat!

Streamick (from Digg) – Streamick.com provides the largest broadband internet TV service of the web. Thousands of users use Streamick.com every day to connect to the major internet broadcasters and watch free live internet TV in the easier way possible. Pretty neat service. Quality is actually decent.

13 things that do not make sense (from Digg) – 13 phenomenons that science can’t seem to explain.

Man seeks record for arm hair length – Jon Sanford takes good care of his hair, washing it regularly and conditioning it occasionally. Now he might break a record for that hair — on his arms. One particularly long strand measured 4.1 inches. If the measurement is ruled official by Guinness World Records, Sanford will have topped the previous record of 3.96 inches

101 Things you do NOT want your System Administrator to say. (from Digg) – Pretty funny. Really seems to be more like 97 things.

Eight Things You Should Never Say to Your Bartender (from Digg) – It seems I’ve already violated rule #1.

Whiteboard music (from Digg) – pretty cool whiteboard animation.

Stokke Gravity Chair Leans Back and Forward: We’re Stoked (from Digg) – Further proving you don’t have to be in orbit to be weightless, the Gravity Chair from Norwegian baby products maker Stokke can sit upright as an office chair, function as a rocker, and lean way back for that serious contemplation your boss told you to stop doing. See it in its variety of unusual permutations, after the jump.

Get a Laptop (from Digg) – pretty funny commercial.

Top 20 replies by Programmers to Testers when their programs don’t work (from Digg) – another funny list of things to read. The #1 response: It works on my machine. Haha. Neat! haha = 哈哈 (accidentally switch my IME).

Food Network: “There’s much penis going on here” (from Deadlock) – haha. I guess there’s a word such as pea-ness.

Mitch Hedberg Random Quote Generator (from Digg) – I still laugh. What would be neat is if they provided some code that you could add to your site and you can put Mitch’s Random Quote: ____________________ on your website.

Drunk Fails Sobriety Test (from Digg) – This is hilarious. This dude fails the sobriety test before it even begins. The cop asks him to hold a tape and place it on the ground and he passes out and lands on his head.

Megadeth’s “Gears of War” Song Available for Download (from Digg) – Heavy metal band Megadeth has made available as a free download its “Gears of War” song composed exclusively for Epic Games’ third-person shooter.

Body mod – Turn your pee blue! – Haha. By congesting a bunch of “supposedly” harmless blue food dye, you can turn your pee blue! That’d be neat!

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View Count

So I’ve installed a new plug-in called View Count by Michael O’Connell. Was pretty simple. Getting the view count was the 1st step in what I was trying to accomplish. I wanted to add a list of the top viewed posts in my sidebar. Installing the plug-in was pretty simple as I just dropped the folder and file into my WordPress wp-content\plugins directory.

Once activated, there was a new column in my wp_posts table called view_count. The default value is 0, but this’ll change once this plug-in is ran for some time.

So the next step was to create the MySQL query to get the x most viewed posts. Turns out executing the query was easier than I thought:
$results = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID, post_title, view_count FROM $wpdb->posts ORDER BY view_count DESC LIMIT $limit" );

Then for each result in the array of results you got back, I did the following which links to the post with title and displays how many views it has:
echo '<li><a href="' . get_permalink( $result->ID ) . '">' . $result->post_title . '</a> [<strong>' . $result->view_count . '</strong>]</li>';

And that’s basically it!

I did notice 1 problem with with the plug-in’s instruction. It states to show your posts sorted by view count, to just add this link: ?ordrby=view_count, however, the correct link according to the code does have the ‘e’ which is ?orderby=view_count.

Apparently, it’s also counting when I’m writing/editing the post. I frequently save due to times in the past when I lost complete essays by accidentally closing the tab or if my browser crashes and each reload counts as 1 view. I’ve changed it so it ignores my views, so it seems like a good workaround for now.

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GamerCard

You’ve probably noticed a new funky looking image on the underneath my menus. This is my Xbox 360 GamerCard. As you can see, my stats are rather embarrassing, but I’m not really much of a gamer. The percent of games I play to completion is probably below 5%. Usually I just play till I get bored and what ends up happening is a couple months later after not touching it for so long, I decide it would be better to reclaim the space so I uninstall it.

So I was reading B$ and saw someone’s GamerCard and I thought that was pretty neat and checked to see if I could place it on my blog. I really just need an “About me” page to post all this crap. Haha.

You can get your own at: MyGamerCard.net. I’m not sure if this site is associated with Microsoft or Xbox Live, but they seem to be pulling the data from somewhere.

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AdBrite

For those who haven’t registered/logged in, you’ll probably noticed the new ads on my site. Not sure if they’re going to be permanent, but just another experimentation.

I’m trying out a new ad company this time: AdBrite. At first, I thought their site was just weird, where they don’t have any images. Turns out I was ABP (Ad Block Plus) was blocking anything from their domain. Haha.

Some interesting things is the fact you can actually define at what amount you need to accrue before you get a check. I believe Google Adsense required a minimum of $100 before you can cash out. I’m not sure what the minimum for AdBrite is, but I set mine to $10.