Sad News – And old is new again

 Blog  1 Response »
Apr 012011
 

Seven years after the Austin Metblog started, the Metroblogging network is shutting down. I was able to get the content that I created and import it into my own blog here so that it wouldn’t be lost. I haven’t been posting much here, so it’ll be a shot of content. If I remember correctly, it’s something like 500-600 posts.

If the site does go down completely, some of the images may be lost. I’m not sure that I’m motivated enough to go and fix that along with the internal links. I think I wrote some decent stuff over time, so I’m glad not to have lost it. Thanks to both Sean and Jason for starting it in the first place. I’ve met some pretty cool people through the site. I’m pretty sure that the original, Blogging LA, will continue on.

 Posted by ttrentham at 7:45 am

Scentless Apprentice

 Blog, Family, Geek  No Responses »
Mar 252010
 

Decided I’d title this whatever song was playing on the iPhone when I started writing. Seems appropriate, I guess.

The last post was a little less than a month before M. was born. He’s nearly nine months old now. Needless to say, I think my blogging urge is being fulfilled by Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious, YouTube and whatever little posting I still do over at Metroblogging Austin.

Is a new baby a good enough excuse? Do I need an excuse? Should I keep updating WordPress versions to keep ahead of the script kiddies (probably)? Should I change the theme (probably)?

It’s also been nine months since I quit the main band. I’ve had a couple gigs with Victims of Leisure since then, but we haven’t played or practiced since before Thanksgiving. We’ve got one coming up this Saturday for the gig at the Parlor next week (April 3). I’m not sure I even know how to hold the drumsticks still (or remember the songs). It could be ugly. Better be sure I have plenty of beer so I’ll play better.

We finally tried out a Skype video call with my parents using the webcam that I got for Xmas this week. Ours has been working since the beginning of the year, but it took this long to get my parents going. Now my mother-in-law is running out to get a webcam as well. Yes, we’re just now joining 2004 and doing video calls with far flung relatives. If you’ve got a webcam and are on Skype, come find us. It’s the same damn username that I use for everything.

 Posted by ttrentham at 4:51 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Renewal

 Blog, Family  No Responses »
Jan 082009
 

I suppose I’m a bit late for the end of year/start of year post, but since I’ve neglecting blogging here so much over the past year, this doesn’t seem all that bad.

2008 was a real bitch in a lot of ways. I know I’m not the only one hoping that 2009 is better. Only 12 more days before we’re rid of G.W. Bush. Amazing. He’s been the president for nearly all of my childrens’ lives. The Boy was born under Clinton, but Bush was sworn in before his first birthday. It’s no secret that I’ll be glad to see him go. I’m clearly not alone in that sentiment.

We’ve got some new things to look forward to this year, the most monumental being the arrival of our third child in July. We’ve got six months to prepare and we’ve already got a long list of things that need to be done to the house and the crap that we’ve accumulated in 10 years here. We’re also going to get the kids to help out around the house a lot more to ease things on us once the baby arrives.

I’ve been terrible about budgets in the past, but it’s time to get serious about one this year. I’ve been checking out Mint for the past couple of weeks. It’s not perfect, but I like it better than Quicken.

I’m not sure about my drumming hobby in the context of a third kid. I’ll have to wrestle with that one over the next six months. We didn’t apply for SXSW this year. I think we’ll go for the alternate showcases this year and see how that goes.

We tried out a gym membership at Lifetime for most of last year and failed miserably. I need to come up with an achieveable workout plan. We got a Wii Fit at Christmas and I’ve been dabbling with that, but that’s only a part of the fitness picture.

Kind of a rambling post, but I wanted to get something going to get back into the groove. Let’s see if I can do at least two posts a month here and on the Austin Metblog.

 Posted by ttrentham at 9:18 pm  Tagged with:

iPhoning it in

 Blog, Family, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jul 252008
 

I suppose having a template that only shows recent posts on the home page is one way of making sure you blog on a semi-regular basis. I’ve found that Twitter, Flickr and Delicious are commanding more of my attention these days than the blog. Well, and work and family…

The summer rolls on. It’s been a hot one so far without much relief from 90 and 100 degree heat. The electric bill is reflecting that. We hosted a last minute July 4th party at our place. Parties are always a good way to force you to clean up the joint.

We checked out WALL-E and Iron Man in the theater so far this summer. We rented/cabled/on-demanded Batman Begins, Apocalypto, Enchanted,  Hellboy and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. We went to the IMAX theater at Bob Bullock on Saturday. Austin Books & Comics and the museum were having bat-related activites, including the “bat lady” who had several live bats to show the kids. The lines for the movie were long.

I scored an iPhone a week ago. I had to wait 3 hours in line to get it. I’m liking it so far. The Bat Lady shot that I linked is actually my first uploaded iPhone shot. I’ve made a few iPhone related tweaks to this blog including setting the default viewport and adding a home screen image based on the favicon. I downloaded and installed the WordPress app for iPhone, but haven’t tried it out yet.

 Posted by ttrentham at 2:40 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Ugh. WordPress hacked.

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May 022008
 

According to the Dreamhost people, my WordPress install got hacked. I tried upgrading from 2.5 to 2.5.1 today and even though their install bot claimed that I’d upgraded, everything in WordPress still said I was on 2.5. I’m not sure if the hack that was exploited was the one fixed in 2.5.1, but now everything’s borked and I’m back to the default theme. It’s going to take me some time to get everything customized again. Sigh.

 Posted by ttrentham at 1:41 pm  Tagged with: , ,

Site will be down

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Mar 212008
 

Apparently, my web server is moving data centers and will be down from 11PM tonight to 11AM tomorrow (CDT).

 Posted by ttrentham at 8:43 am

RIP Delicious Autopost

 Blog, Uncategorized  No Responses »
Dec 012007
 

I don’t know what’s causing the formatting problems with the delicious auto posting, so I killed it. I’m going to try to resume proper blog posting. If you liked following the links, you can find add the RSS feed or just check the page. It should be linked over on the right as well.

 Posted by ttrentham at 2:12 pm

Spamorama

 Blog, Food and Drink  No Responses »
Jun 072007
 

I don’t know what it is, but lately I’ve been getting hammered with comment spam, which seems really odd since this blog has essentially become a mirror of my delicious links with a few legitimate posts thrown in for good measure.

I’ve got a few posts that I’ve been meaning to complete for several weeks, but for now I’ll pass on from Kristy that Sonic is having free root beer floats from 8pm-midnight tonight to promote their later hours. Mmmmm…root beer. Anybody know if they use real root beer or that caffeine-laced stuff like Barq’s?

 Posted by ttrentham at 12:07 pm

Blogroll in effect

 Blog  1 Response »
Mar 032007
 

I was forced into another WordPress upgrade this week. My hosting provider upgraded their version of PHP and recommended upgrading into a version of WordPress that was apparently hacked, so I had to upgrade again. I hadn’t ever really done much of a blogroll in the past, so I’m rolling it out now. Check those people out. They’re good stuff.

 Posted by ttrentham at 5:36 pm

Blogger / Bloglines RSS Problem

 Blog, Geek  No Responses »
Feb 062007
 

Maybe Google’s Blogger shouldn’t have come out of beta just yet…

I’ve noticed over the last week or so that some of the Blogger-hosted blogs that I subscribe to via Bloglines have disappeared. I did a test post over on my Blogger account that I never use. Chris also mentioned something about this today.

Blogger’s been encouraging people to switch over and use their Google accounts as a login and switch to the new and improved Blogger. That’s all well and good, but it seems that something’s not quite right with the RSS feeds.

First off, it sucks that RSS feeds can’t be automatically redirected. I’m pretty sure that there are ways to do this, but Blogger doesn’t seem too worried about helping with it.

Up until recently, I’ve subscribed to the RSS feeds of Blogger-hosted blogs at http://blogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml?bsuser=blogname. In fact, Bloglines even gives you a shortcut in their add subscription interface under the Communities section that allows you just to enter the Blogger username of the blog and they do the rest. The problem is that this shortcut still points to the old feeds. The new format seems to be http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default. Hitting that URL directly returns the RSS XML. If you try to subscribe to that URL in Bloglines, it lets you add the subscription, but you don’t get any new updates. Adding the new RSS URLs in Google Reader works just fine, not surprising, since Google obviously owns the reader and they own Blogger.

I sent an e-mail to Bloglines asking about the problem. I’m not sure that there’s anything to be done from Blogger’s end, but we’ll see. I’ll update if I hear something. I can’t be the only one having this problem.

If they don’t get it fixed soon, it could shove me into Google Reader’s waiting arms. I tried them a few months ago and decided to stay with Bloglines. It might be time for another look. Coincidentally,  Lifehacker has an article touting Google Reader today.
[tags]blogger, bloglines, rss, feeds, googlereader, google[/tags]

 Posted by ttrentham at 1:15 pm
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