The best a man can get

Let me get this out at the beginning. I suck at shaving, I’m no good at it. Part of the reason is a lack of practice. Why do I have lack of practice? Because as a man-child, I cannot grow facial hair on a schedule that men do. Unlike my buddy Greezy who needs to shave about every 30 minutes, I can generally go two days, and sometimes three, without shaving. This is just fine with me, as in general its a time consuming exercise. A necessary one, but still time consuming. (A situation that can probably improve with added practice, but bringing that up makes this paragraph circular.)

Due to my infrequency of shaving, when I buy shaving supplies they last somewhere around 5 to 6 years. I just hit that magic time where I needed to re-up.

Like many, I laughed when The Onion mocked the practice of adding more and more blades to a razor. Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades is a classic article, or rather, would have been a classic piece of comedy if it wasn’t in fact prophecy. Yes, enter the Gillette Fusion which made 5 blades a reality. Now, for most people, this is old news, and to me it is as well.

Since it was time to rebuy, I thought I’d give the whole 5 blade thing a try. I have to say, its the closest/best shave I’ve ever had. It makes me feel like a shaving pro without any required effort on my part. Its strange I find myself gushing about a razor, but its that much of an improvement on my shaving. I don’t even have the Fusion with the vibrator build in, just the regular old blade. I’ve had the vibrating one is even better, but my face doesn’t need pleasure while I’m shaving.

So, yeah, I’m a product loving dork.

Wingin’ It

While I was in AZ for work last week I once again got to stop by the Draco Vista studios. This time it was for a recording of Wingin’ It 3D. I had met Mike and Lorrie before, who are awesome people, but I also got to meet the awesomeness of Debbie, Eliza, Chris Kris, Scott Thomas, and Doug. Thanks to all of them for their hospitality.

One of the things I’ve always thought when listening to many of the Farpoint shows has been “I could hang out with these people.” What was nice about hanging out for WI3d was the realization that I was right. These are my kind of people. If I lived in the Phoenix area, I could see myself stopping by quiet often. (If they would have me, of course.)

It was a great time for me, hopefully the feeling was mutual. There was great beer (some of which I brought,) great food, and great people. I highly recommend it.

The show should be up today and tomorrow, I’ll link them when I have time.

[Update 4:14PM: Voicemail Show]

[Update 5/1 12PM:  First, Regular Show #36.  I realize I should have titled this post “Wingin’ It, they be bringing it.”  But also, it was pointed out in the comments by Brian that I forgot to mention him and Tim and teh aw esome they bring as well.  Not sure how the hell I did that.  I blame alcohol.  Also, I said Scott above when I meant Thomas and horked Kris’s name, those were just plain super-dumbness.]

Spam Subject of the week

You know, I shouldn’t be shocked by this anymore, but I still am. I love the niche markets that some spammers go after.

Subject: I know what ladies do on a farm. DO NOT leave them there unattended!

Do not leave your spouse on a farm unattended. She may replace you with animals and you will be way out of the competition for the rest of your relationship. I learned it the hard way

Fix/Tricks for plugin auto-update on WordPress 2.5

[READ THIS FIRST!!!  Update 6/13/2009: If you’ve come here looking to get plugin updates to work and you’re using WordPress 2.8, you really want to start with this more recent post on the topic and then come back for the permission information.]

One of the neat features of WordPress 2.5 is the click to install plugin upgrades, assuming the plugin is registered in the WordPress Plugin Directory. If certain conditions are correct on the server it can do it in place, otherwise it tries to do it via FTP.

To make it so wordpress could upgrade them on the server without FTP requires doing some permission changes. You should be aware, the changes I made allow the web server (Apache) to be able to write to the plugin directory. This creates some security exposure. Since I do nightly backups, for me this is an acceptable risk. You may make a different call.

The way I’ve done it also assumes you have admin rights on the unix box or you’re friendly with (s)he who does. Without admin rights to do the group ownership changes, you’re stuck having to make files writable by the world, and that’s not something I’d do. Luckily, I hold the power on the box(es) I care about. Continue reading Fix/Tricks for plugin auto-update on WordPress 2.5

Bleeding edge

Looks like both the upgrade to WordPress 2.5 and to keeping my WP up to date by using subversion went smoothly. I should have done the svn thing a long time ago.

One thing I should note is the rsync magic I used to go from the WordPress 2.5 hand install to WordPress 2.5 svn install. It allowed me to move all the files that aren’t part of the WP distribution that I have, mostly plugins but includes things like .htaccess files as well as plugins. There may be some redundant flags, but it worked and I’m done.

rsync -aCOSpcrv --exclude=wp-content/cache/ wordpress/. blog.new

Now to actually generate some content. But first, to finish with the Disney photos from vacation 2 weeks ago.

[Update 3/31: I forgot to mention, the above rsync command assumes you have the subversion version checked out in blog.new and your old blog in wordpress. Change your line as needed.]

Keith's attempts to fix the cable of life