kyleabaker.com

Happy Birthday Brittany!

kyleabaker — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:00:09 +0000

So many birthdays this month! Here’s another shout-out…Happy 21st Birthday Brittany…where ever you are! You make me feel old, haha. I’ll be 22 soon.

(I’m pretty sure it’s today anyway, couldn’t find it on facebook and no wall posts yet…but I remembered something about it being between mine and brandon’s)

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A fresh hair cut

kyleabaker — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:51:58 +0000

So today has been a pretty typical day. I woke up around 9:30 or 10, got up and took a shower and checked my emails. Oh, I got one Orgoo request last night as well! 10 left if you’re interested!

So I went out to get a hair cut today and man isn’t it nice! My hair was getting a little long and shaggy. This hot weather hasn’t been to kind on me either, haha. Now I can feel the breeze again and not burn up everywhere, haha. I got my ears lowered as they say (they being no one really, just an expression, haha).

It’s good to see the rain coming in now as well! The thunderstorms don’t bother me too much, but when they knock out the Internet connection it gets really irritating. Now that I won’t be sweating everywhere I go maybe I can spend some more time outside and off the computer for a change.

No real tech news that I care to write about right now, maybe something will happen soon though so I can dig into it and write up a good how to or review!

Take care everyone and enjoy this awesome weather! Try not to work too much.

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Happy Birthday Brandon!

kyleabaker — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:36:06 +0000

Just wanted to give a Happy Birthday shout-out to Brandon today on his 22nd birthday! He’s still on the trail, but best wishes for your birthday and the trail B. Make sure you party hard today man!

I’m sure we’ll all be ready to party when you get back man!

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[solved] Stop WordPress Spam Registrations

kyleabaker — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:29:21 +0000

I’ll bet all of you out there have dealt with your fair share of spam. Everyone gets it, in their email, blog posts and lately even WordPress registrations! I have a tool for handling spam comments on my blog, but what do I do when I get 10’s to 100’s of spam user registrations on my blog with names and emails like BuyCheapMeds and FreeSoftwareDVDs@some-russian-website.ru?

Well, thank goodness the WordPress Extend site has so much to offer! After asking in the WordPress forums how to completely disable new user registrations…and getting little response…I decided that I would have to edit some of the WordPress files to ignore new user registrations in a fashion to fit my needs. I wanted to keep them open from the admin panel so I myself can add new users, but block outsiders from registering so I could control the spam registrations.

To my surprise I got a response in the forum thread that I started with an example plugin that could be used. I looked into the example plugin, but I found myself confused at the description and uncertain of how the plugin actually worked. Who wants to install something on their site when they have no clue how it works!

I dug a bit deeper and searched this time for only 5-10 minutes and came across two plugins that were capable of handling my needs and one that was just plain cool.

To control your spam registrations I would suggest the following three plugins which are ordered according to the order that I would choose them.

Register Plus
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/register-plus/
Sabre
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sabre/
Referrer Bouncer
http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/word-press-1-5-plugin-referer-bouncer/

If you’re wondering why I sorted them this way then I’ll try to explain quickly.

Referrer Bouncer was the one that was suggested to me in the forum thread, but I found that it was a bit more involved than the others and it required the user to create a file called “referer.txt” and add domains that should be blocked (at least I think it was for blocked domains…not a clear description or how to ) and it just made more sense to go with a different plugin rather than tracking down all of the referring sites that I needed to block.

Sabre does exactly what I wanted to do. It was like it knew what I wanted before I asked, haha, but I decided to go with Register Plus in the end because it allows me to create invitation codes so that I can easily leave the registration open to the public, but they will need to contact me and request an invitation.

Why did I chose this method? I figured that most people would prefer not to register in the first place. Nothing at kyleabaker.com is restricted to the general public that is open to the registered users…it’s all the same. So if you wanted to post then you can freely post comments here. The invitations are for friends and people that I know so they can register if they wish and I know they won’t be spamming me. Except maybe Dan…he’s done it before.

The third plugin that I found (the Referrer Bouncer was found by someone else and posted in the WordPress forums for me) was one that allows users to login via OpenID! This is really cool because it doesn’t require a user to actually register at your site and waste space! They can register at any website that offers OpenID such as Yahoo, WordPress, Flickr (also Yahoo) and many more!

I didn’t go with WP-OpenID because spammers can still register via OpenID and login on your site. They wouldn’t be spamming the registrations, that’s one plus side, but they are still encouraged to test out my comment filtering system..and they always jump at chances to piss people off like that.

So I suggest you look into my “research” if you’re having similar trouble! Enjoy!

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Bill Gates’ Last Day With Microsoft

kyleabaker — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:41:40 +0000

As many of you may already know, today is the last day that Bill Gates will be working with Microsoft. He will be stepping down from his position with Microsoft and is currently the third-richest man in the world!

Microsoft will undoubtedly continue to prosper without Gates of course, but what he did to build and develop the company will be unmatched for the the rest of it’s existence. Although I’ve long since switched to open source platforms such as Ubuntu linux, I must respect the work and effort that he has put into building the corporate Microsoft that we know today.

While catching up in the news over the past few days, I came across a hilarious video featuring Bill Gates and several celebrities in a short skit. You should check it out!

Bill Gates will now be spending his time and work to contribute to charities. What a noble thing to do! I mean with his wealth and status he could do anything, but he chose a very respectable way to spend his retired time.

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11 Orgoo Invites left if anyone wants one!

kyleabaker — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:18:13 +0000

I’ve still got 11 invites left for the new email service called Orgoo that integrates all of your favorite instant messaging services into the same window!

It’s a very cool new email service mainly aimed towards the younger generation, but everyone would love the integrated instant message features that Orgoo offers. It’s currently invite only, but I have 11 left to give out! If you’re interested in trying Orgoo and want an invite then all you need to do is email me with an invite request.

You can find my contact information on the About page (link located at the top). Please make sure that the subject contains [Orgoo Invite], otherwise it will most likely go straight to spam.

Make sure that you mention in the comments that you sent a request as well and I’ll make sure to check my mail and send you an invite immediately. Check it out while the invites last! Else you’ll most likely be waiting for a while. If you request an invite from the main page then chances are it will take you a while to receive it, so you should take advantage of my offering.

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“Sliders” - Watched and Reviewed

kyleabaker — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:38:59 +0000

“Sliders” was a Science Fiction (Sci-Fi) TV series that aired from 1995-2000. It’s one of those “oldie, but goodie[s]” if you know what I mean.

The tag line sums it up very nicely.

Four people just found a gateway to another dimension, but they forgot one problem… how to get back!

I’m personally not a fan of The X-Files or anything like that, but I really did enjoy watching this show. I just finished watching the entire show, seasons 1-5, on Netflix with Watch Instantly! Well, almost entirely, there were about 8 episodes that Netflix did not have available to Watch Instantly (it’s like a little scam that Netflix tries to pull thinking we’ll never realize that they would rather slow our watching with rentals).

The show was at times very interesting and at other just plain old interesting. I did, however, notice a number of flaws in the story line and other facts that were distributed randomly. I didn’t let any of those get in the way of an honest rating for this show, because I enjoy watching these older shows and movies usually more than brand new shows.

If you haven’t seen the show and are planning to watch it or catch-up on some episodes then you may not want to read the details below (possible spoilers)!

One big annoyance that I had with the sitecom as a whole is that the worlds that the original four always slide into are the same as their original with different twists, such as communism and lack of technology. What’s funny is that their duplicates are always there as well and one of them usually holds a pretty powerful position in the alternate world…so the double takes advantage of that situation to make sure they slide to their next world safely.

Another funny thing is that in alternate worlds your double may or may not exist. They would, however, never play with these cases in the stories that were released. When a character died on the show, they would never be seen again. Now that doesn’t make those worlds very alternate does it?

Also, they stress time and time again that the slider device does not allow them to move forward in time or backward in time. They always end up in the same year and same hour and same minute…only a different world. They tend to mess this up two or three times in one of the seasons and say that they are in the pas. Then a new sliders asks in one episode if they slide to the past on another world and they aren’t sure…of course not! The prof. and Quinn already decided that they were not affecting time travel…so where is the confusion? Only in the writers minds.

I’ll have to say, the two worst actors on there are Rembrandt ‘Crying Man’ Brown (Cleavant Derricks) and Colin Mallory (Charlie O’Connell). At times they can be decent, but I get sick of Rembrandt Brown always having the role where they land in a world where things aren’t perfect and always asks questions like: “I have one question. How can you people blah blah blah..on this world?” like it’s any of his business and his duty to make everything perfect.

He has to be one of the most annoying ones on the show. And then in the fifth season he begins to run the opening lines on the show…just pathetically read if you ask me.

Colin Mallory, Quinn’s older brother, plays a very poor role of being behind times (technologically) and he has a terrible accent. Blah.

Also, it seems that the focus of the show shifts three or four times off course from the original focus in the show. The start sliding just to be the first in the world to see what happens, but then they immediately run into the problem of not being able to return home. The show follows this and runs with it for a couple seasons, but you can tell that the writers are drying up and running out of ideas. Shows start going from minor twists to enormous twists. Not that dinosaurs couldn’t rule the earth in an alternate universe, but the lack of anything that different and then all of a sudden everything is that different is just a little confusing and crappy.

Then, after the crazy worlds with primitive people and animals…we got the whole Kromagg (or however it’s spelled) thing. The Kromaggs were on basically every alternate world that they slid into after they saw them the first time. Kind of stupid how they tried to save every world from the Kromaggs. Honestly, if you’re just sliding so you can get back to your own world wouldn’t you just lay back and enough each world or hunker down in the war zone worlds? I wouldn’t be wasting the time trying to save each alternate world, because they are alternate for a reason. You can’t make them all the same as your own and who says your own is better anyways? Just not very well thought out if you ask me.

I would be sitting out on the beaches and hitting up the popular tourist sites and snapping pictures! Not risking my life to save a world and each time narrowly escaping into the vortex and into another world, only making it by a minute or less at times.

Over all, it’s a good show from start to finish. Worth watching if you can find the time. Just don’t keep notes every time you see something that doesn’t add up or contradicts what has been previously outlined. The best thing to do is just sit back and enjoy the show! If you want to see some comments on the show by other fans who loved the show, but found that it was ruined or flawed in some way then check out this group f comments on Sliders from TV.com.

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Opera 9.5 Final Released

kyleabaker — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:05:59 +0000

Today Opera released a new “stable” build to the public. The latest “stable” version of Opera changed from Opera 9.27 to Opera 9.50. Opera released Opera 9.5 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) just two days ago. Between Opera 9.27 and Opera 9.50, the Opera Desktop Team fixed ~2350 bugs! You can view the changelogs for Windows, Macinstosh and Unix.

Please help spread Opera! digg it!

This is an incredible amount of fixes for a browser or any product!

Opera 9.5 Wallpapers

To use this wallpaper, you can right-click on the resolution sizes and save the image to your computer. Enjoy!

For a full overview of the new features in Opera 9.5 check out my overview of Opera 9.5 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) Opera 9.5 is available for Windows, Macintosh and Unix x86 (32-bit) and Unix x86_64 (64-bit). Go get Opera 9.5 now!

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Opera 9.5 Release Candidate 1

kyleabaker — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:36:51 +0000

Today Jon von Tetzchner, Opera CEO, has officially release Opera 9.5 RC1 to the world. It has been two years since Opera 9 was first released, so you can image the progress and improvements that have been made since then!

The version numbering may be a bit confusing, but we all might as well consider Opera 9 and Opera 9.5 to be two completely different versions..like Opera 8 vs. Opera 9.

Opera 9.5 has introduced a number of new features and stability improvements since Opera 9 and has even improved compatibility between websites that used to simply not work in Opera.

New features that you will find and fall in love with in Opera 9.5 include Speed Dial, Opera Link, Quick Find, Dragonfly, EV (Extended Validation) and new sportier and improved skin!

Speed Dial

Get to your favorite Web sites with just one click! Speed Dial is a set of visual bookmarks you see when you open a new tab. To add a new page, simply click on an empty Speed Dial.

Opera Link

Access your favorite Web sites everywhere! Opera Link syncs your bookmarks and Speed Dial between your computers and mobile phone. Log in with your Opera username, and your data will always be accessible.

Quick Find

Have you ever forgot the page where you found that great article or that perfect gift? Opera remembers the actual content of the Web pages you visit. In the address bar, just type one word you remember, and Opera finds the page for you immediately.

Dragonfly

Opera 9.5 features a new version of Opera Dragonfly, the upcoming Opera developer tools. Opera Dragonfly makes developing using Opera easier than ever, both on your computer and mobile phone.

EV (Extended Validation)

Not all Web pages are what they say they are. In Opera 9.5, Fraud Protection is enabled by default, detecting and warning you about fraudulent Web sites automatically. Support for Extended Validation certificates (EV) provides added assurance and trust for secure Web sites.

Opera 9.5 Skin

To top things off with, Opera has introduced a new default skin for the browser that is designed to make your life easier and make the browser look more mainstream.

I’ve covered some of the changes made to the skin and layout in another post, but the main things that changed were the placement of the New Tab button, the Home button has returned by default and the coloration of the icons and tool bars have changed.

Now it’s time to, as Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner said, continue to support Opera by turning the whisper into a shout!

Go check out Opera 9.5 RC1 now!

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Summertime weather

kyleabaker — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:07:16 +0000

Although it’s not officially summertime yet, the weather here has been exhausting! It’s been easily reaching into the 80’s and mid-90’s here in Western North Carolina, but the temperature down at the state capital have been topping at or near 100 degrees on a fairly regular basis!

Today, in the mountains, we’ve had a bit of a break with the temperature reaching just over 80 degrees. It’s a good time to take a vacation and just get out on the beach and into some cool waves.

Catching those waves may be a while for me as I’m planning a trip to the beach in mid July, but wouldn’t it be nice right about now.

I only hope that these temperatures are still here when I head to the beach! No one likes a beach trip with bad weather.

Well, not much else to blog about today other than the Worldwide Developers Conference 2008. That will find it’s way into another post soon.

In the meantime try to stay out of the heat.

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