Kirb’s Musings

Kirby Witmer’s ponderings, ruminations, and meditations of… anything.

As I mentioned before, I upgraded my Blog to the latest version of Wordpress, which includes a new feature called tagging*. I also noticed they had a cool utility to convert your categories to tags, which I proceeded to do. Big mistake. Not only did it convert all my categories into tags, it removed the categories, and categorized all my posts with the default category. And I couldn’t find an undo feature anywhere**. Hmm… now what? So what I did for now is added the following lines to my .htaccess file.

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule /category/ http://blog.kirb.com [R]

So now what happens is that when someone accesses one of my now non-existant categories it redirects them to the home page instead of giving them a Not Found page. Ideally it should redirect them to the tag instead, but I couldn’t figure out how to make that work. If anyone knows how to do that, let me know.

*Tagging is not a new idea, in fact it has become hugely popular. This is just the first time Wordpress includes it by default.
**You say its called backups? What’s that?

UPDATE: I’m now getting an error “mod_rewrite: maximum number of internal redirects reached” I’m not sure if its related to this change or not, but I have disabled it in the meantime.

I just upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.3 and upgraded a bunch of plugins. My theme wasn’t compatible with the new version of Wordpress therefore I have a ugly temporary one up until I find one that I like. I know, you are thinking that… “this blog is always under construction, and why doesn’t this idiot just leave good enough alone?” Ummm… you have a point.

Microsoft today released to a select few users a SP1 Beta for Windows Vista.

Some improvements include:

• Removed some of the delay in logging in to your computer, especially domain-joined computers.
• Overall responsiveness is a lot better. i.e. copying files, resuming from hibernation or sleep mode, etc.
• A lot more improvements listed here.

All of my desktop computers have been running Windows Vista for some time. In the beginning it was a real trial, because a lot of programs and drivers didn’t work well at all. Quickbooks and Adobe Reader to name two. I must say however, that in the months since Vista has been released, HUGE improvements have been made in program and driver compatiblity. And alot of these improvements have been pushed out via Windows Update. I’m looking forward to Service Pack 1 though, especially if it fixes that annoying “slow copying of files” bug.

Stomping on garlic with your shoes on is apparently not the correct way to prepare food. The Rockland County health department hit the Great China Buffet restaurant with two violations after someone took pictures of an employee stomping on a bowl of garlic with his boots in an alley. The man alerted health inspectors.”I go back there, and the guy’s stepping on garlic,” said Dan Barreto, who used to eat at the restaurant. “There he was just jumping up and down on it, smashing it up, having a good time.”

That’s just sick. I’m no Chinese food fan, and this will only increase my distaste for it. Not that McDonald’s is any better.

Remember all those apple fan boys lining up for the new iPhone? Well, now they are all upset.

Via Cnet News.com

The loyal Apple customers who purchased the iPhone at its
initial release, waited in lines for hours and paid a premium
price, feel taken advantage of. I feel that I should be reimbursed
for the $200 more that I paid for my iPhone, or be given a free
upgrade to an 8 GB model.

Via wired.com.

Say what you will about the folly of early adoption — we’ve got a few who willingly paid the “stupid tax” within our ranks. But a drop of $200 after just 66 days means that the iPhone decreased roughly $3.03 a day in retail value between launch and yesterday’s announcement.

Anyone thinking, crybaby? I say, tough. This is life in the technology world. If you want to be on the cutting edge, expect to pay dearly for it, and don’t be upset when the price drops the next week.