Lewis' Blog Tales from the trenches of information technology

28Apr/130

A sincere apology to users of my YUM repo mirror

You see, it all started in January, when I decided to do a good deed (I should have known better). I set up a YUM repository mirror for Netlabs.org, as OS/2 now uses RPM and YUM for (some) package management (I have a post in draft on that whole issue). It turns out, however, that for reasons which I shall explain, the xml (and related) files in my mirror weren't getting updated, so while I was doing a great job of adding content, I wasn't updating the repo information, so subscribers had no idea.

So, for all of you out there who have come to rely over the past couple of months on my US mirror of the Netlabs YUM repository, I most humbly apologize for the inconvenience. It's fixed now, though.

21Oct/120

Mass editing users in WordPress

Eek!

A thousand apologies to those of you who have received email notifications of my last post, which added two new categories to the blog. Following up on an enhancement request from a long-time friend to provide email notifications of new posts, I installed the Subscribe2 plugin. Not fully understanding the ramifications of setting "Option for Registered Users to auto-subscribe to new categories is checked by default" to "Yes," I set that, which automatically enabled all existing users as subscribers to newly-created categories, even if they were not subscribed to any categories previously (my reading of this option was that only new registrants would be auto-subscribed to new categories, thus saving them click-time during setup).

8Jul/120

New upgrade (yet again)

Well, with all of the hullabaloo over WP 3.4, I decided to wait until 3.4.1. The auto-upgrade didn't, so I had to do things the old fashioned way. Luckily, when local to the server and with good backups, it wasn't too terrible.

Anyway, as always, if you find something which isn't working quite right, please use the contact form to drop me a note.

Enjoy.

PS - I'll have a couple new posts coming soon related to policy routing in Linux using iproute2 and tying that into Squid. Be sure to watch for them.

21Jan/125

SOPA / PIPA

Orwell, George: Social Classes (1984)

George Orwell's diagram of the social classes from 1984.

If you happen upon this blog and are utterly clueless about the two acronyms comprising the title of this post, I strongly urge you to click the ribbon in the upper right corner of your browser window to learn more about these potentially disastrous pieces of flotsam...er...legislation.

The United States Congress cannot legislate - or more specifically, abridge our - Freedom of Speech; it has been guaranteed through our Constitution's First Amendment (1791).

Why is it, then, that such abuses of power take place so often, and with so little intervention on the part of the People?

Because, I think, the vast majority of the People are Proles (sheep).

Please do not be a Prole.

In Germany, in the 1930's, more people were as Proles. This did not lead to good things. Let not history repeat itself (yet again).

2Jan/120

A new year, a new WordPress version

Happy New Year, all.

I specifically held off upgrading WordPress from 3.2.1 to 3.3 until more of my plugins had been updated and until I'd had a chance to read up on what others were experiencing. All things considered, though, the upgrade seemed to be fairly painless (though why some people insist upon running their own websites and doing such installations and upgrades themselves I shall never understand), and this evening, it seemed that I had a handful of plugins which were candidates for updates, so I took the plunge all the way 'round.

If you happen to notice anything amiss, please bring it to my attention via the contact form or direct email (most of you reading this blog probably have it, but in case you don't, just use lgrosenthal at the domain of this site or .com, and you should get right through to me.

Thanks for reading, and again, Happy New Year!

26Nov/112

Site updates & more updates!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

The Login page was bugging me that it didn't match the site theme, so I installed Jeff Farthing's Theme My Login plugin, and BAM! Exactly what the doctor ordered!

Still not satisfied that something didn't blow up, I realized that I was kind of jealous of my good friend, zippy1981's gravatar, and wondered why I didn't have one of my own... D'Oh! I don't have a Gravatar account... Not knowing enough about Gravatar to decide whether I wanted to hand over more of my personal information to them, I grabbed another great WordPress plugin, Simple Local Avatars, by Jake Goldman. Now, you can see what I looked like at Warpstock 2005, in Hershey, PA. 😉

Enjoy!

11Apr/110

New version; new theme

After reading some truly hair-raising comments about the WordPress 3.1 upgrade, I had resigned myself to waiting for at least the .1 version to be released. Upon logging into my admin panel over the weekend, however, I was greeted by the prompt to upgrade to 3.1.1, and threw caution to the wind.

The upgrade went off without a hitch (WordPress is truly slick regarding its handling of updates, themes, and widget installations, and I am rarely - if ever - left feeling that I must use my IT talents to maintain my own blog), and I then set about looking for perhaps a slightly less drastic theme.

The result is what you see. So far, I'm quite happy with the result (I haven't changed anything on the handheld side, still using Carrington Mobile). If you have some comments or if something doesn't seem to work quite right, please drop me a note via the contact page and let me know.

Enjoy!