One Hot August Day

It's August 1st. We are in the dog days of summer. The time where you're just about fed up with hot weather, and ready for the fall cool down to happen. Not to mention you're ready for the kids to go back to school. Pools are your best friend, and you get up early just to go for a run

NaBloPoMo theme for August is HOT. So, I'll be writing post about things that are hot. And they won't necessarily be about the weather.

Play along if you would like, visit the web site here.

Photo by PieterMusterd

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The Most Bizzar Political Message I've Ever Heard

A couple of days ago I found a message on my home phone from a local guy named Dell Schanze. It was one of those automated messages that political candidates use when they are running for office, and want to get their message to as many people as possible.

Dell, or Super Dell, as he likes to be called, started slinging mud almost immediately at two other candidate, all of which are running for the Governor of Utah. When ever someone leaves a message on my phone, Vonage provides an audio file I can download and listen too on my PC. I thought hey, this is too good to pass up, I wanted to share the message with a few friends.

I created a Twitter post which included the URL to the MP3 file of the message on my web server. A few people responded, and apparently Robert Gehrke, a writer for the Salt Lake Tribune, wrote a story about Schanze and his message, and included a link to my MP3.

While I think it's cool that the Trib writer used the link to my file, I would have appreciated a heads up, and even some attribution (as I'm doing in this post). Thanks to Russ Page, I was able to move the file to an Amazon S3 server so my blogs bandwidth isn't all chewed up.

The audio is interesting, funny, and has since been changed to be a little less abrasive. Sorry Super Dell, you won't be getting my vote.

superdell.mp3

'Super Dell' launches Super Attack against Huntsman - Salt Lake Tribune

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Nerdtacular 2008 Was A Blast

I'm in this video a few times, and so is Tyler Whitaker. I really want to thank Scott Johnson for a great time. Please take some time to visit Scott's website, MyExtraLife, read the comic, watch a video cast, buy some stuff.

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CouchCast With Bungee Labs

Join us as we talk with Ted Haeger (Director, Developer Programs) from Bungee Labs.

From their website:

Platform-as-a-Service is a single environment encompassing the entire web application lifecycle from development through delivery.

Visit CouchCast.org for all of our shows. Come and be part of this sometimes wacky, sometimes funny, and sometimes techie podcast. Hosted by Robert Merrill, Matthew Reinbold and Thom Allen.

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Some Cool Things About WordPress 2.6

WordPress 2.6 was release a few days ago, and I wanted to point out some really cool features. The first thing I noticed was plug-ins are separated by those that are Active and those that are Inactive. There is also a button now to select all inactive plug-ins and delete them, giving you the ability to remove all those plug-in you don't use any more, but are too lazy to remove from your server.

The next thing I noticed was this little bubble next to the Plugins link on the Dashboard. Now I'm alerted when ever a plug-in has been updated by the author, which helps me keep the installation secure.

Something that has been around since the last version, is an auto-update feature for plug-ins. If a plug-in is hosted in the WordPress repository, you can automatically get the latest version and have it updated on your server without ever leaving the comfort of the administrative tool. Cool!

The next little trick is the WordPress Theme Preview. Now you can click on a theme you've installed and get a glimpse of what you can expect to see with your current content. It uses a LightHouse type affect. I also use a plug-in called Theme Test Drive to accomplish the same task, only I get to see it full size and live. There are some drawbacks to using this plug-in, the number one thing being if you change the sidebar plug-ins, it changes your main theme, so beware.

Finally, XMLRPC is turned off by default. This feature allows blogging clients like ScribeFire, ecto or, Windows Live Writer, to post content to your blog without actually being logged in to your WordPress site. This feature could be exploited, allowing someone to hijack your blog, so most users won't mind. But it does affect your ability to use services that auto post to your blog. Make sure you understand the security risks before turning on.

Please upgrade and keep your sites safe.

[Update: Joseph Scott from Automattic corrected my statement about XMLRPC, in a comment below. Here is what the WordPress 2.6 Blog Post says about the XMLRPC feature: "Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen." So there is a possible security risk, according to this statement, but maybe the code can't be exploited.]

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