Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

WordPress 2.6 Blech!

Now I’m just pissed off. 

It turns out that WP 2.6′s new “Press This” feature — which replaces their useful “Press It” applet — is essentially a PIECE OF USELESS GARBAGE CODE!

Grrr!

It’s supposed to do all these great things with importing photos and movies from sites you’re blogging about so you can put them in your post. NO. IT DOESN’T WORK. 

I tried it with both Safari (which has never worked with WordPress) and Firefox (which has always worked.) I haven’t bothered trying it with my one Windows machine because, honestly, why should I have to use one crappy piece of software (Windows) in order to make use of a second crappy piece of software?? 

This is really irritating. 

Yes, yes…. WordPress is offered free to all. That’s a wonderful thing and, for the price, I really have been very satisfied with it. BUT — wouldn’t you think the WordPress people would have done a little better job of testing 2.6 before releasing it? 

Grrr.

Here’s my advice to anyone using an earlier version: STAY WITH WHAT YOU’VE GOT UNTIL THEY WORK THE BUGS OUT OF 2.6!!! I soooo wish I had!

Messed Up Post Numbers

I have discovered that, in the course of exporting and importing my blog contents, the page id numbers have gotten a bit screwed up. This won’t matter to those of you visiting for the first time. It will, however, possibly be a problem for anyone who has linked to one of my posts.

Please double-check your link to be sure it still goes where you expect it to.

If it doesn’t, you should be able to pretty easily locate the post you’re looking for by doing a search on my blog — just over there to the right. Once you have the new URL, you can exchange it for the old one on your own site.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks for linking to me!

Whew.

A couple days ago I installed the latest update to the blogging software I use, WordPress 2.6, and much to my great dismay my “admin” panel disappeared! (The “admin” panel is where you create new posts, edit old posts, and generally manage the site. Obviously, without access to the admin panel, you’re pretty well screwed.)

Well, I tried a bunch of different things suggested by people on the WordPress fora who’d had a similar problem and — no luck. Finally, this morning, I came up with a plan that — while really a pain in the ass — did work.

Here’s what I did:

1. Back up the database on the hosting server.

2. Copy your uploads, themes, plugins, and (just to simplify your life) your config.php file to your home computer.

3. Completely delete anything having to do with WordPress from your server.

4. Empty out the database on your server. WordPress won’t install if it sees that there’s already stuff in the database. 

5. Do a fresh new installation of WordPress. 

6. Restore the database that you backed up in step 1.

7. Go to the admin panel in your new WordPress installation. You should see all the old posts listed there, BUT your actual blog won’t see them. Don’t panic.

8. Create an export file of the blog from the admin panel. The export file will grab all those old posts.

9. Go back to your server and empty out the database a second time.

10. Go back to your blog and re-do the WordPress installation routine. (You won’t have to re-upload the files. When WordPress sees that the database is empty, it will prompt you to run the installation routine.) 

11. Once you’re back to zero with a fresh installation of WordPress, IMPORT that export file you created in step 8. 

12. All your old posts should now be appearing on your site.

13. One item at a time, copy your themes and plugins back onto your server. Check your site after each addition to make sure everything is still working. (I suggest this because it could have been something in your themes or a plugin that cause the problem to begin with.)

14. Assuming this worked for you — hurray!

It worked for me, but I didn’t come up with it until I’d already spent too many hours screwing around with other possible solutions and even checking out the possibility of moving to a new site host (because one person online had suggested that this particular problem might be the result of a PHP memory issue on the server.) 

Anyway. I’m pleased that you are reading this. It means I finally got my site back up and functioning with WordPress 2.6 — which really is quite nice, now that I can actually use it.

Squirrel-o-vision!

From left to right: Steve, Stella, Eddie. Squirrel is up on top of fence.

First Fruits

These are among the first of this year’s tomatoes. Beautiful, no?

The red one is, of course, a roma. The yellow ones (which are only about an inch and a half long!) are an heirloom variety called “yellow pear”. They’re sweet and delicious and the plant they grow on has reached the height of a small tree!

I just picked these while I was out filling the bird feeders. Since we weren’t going to have salad tonight, we’re going to dice them and put them on our burgers. (Veggie burger for me!)

Pandora Now on iPhone

If you don’t do Pandora… well, you’re crazy if you don’t do Pandora. BUT, if you have an iPhone (and I do) and you don’t do Pandora now that it’s available for iPhone, you’re something beyond crazy. I don’t even know what I’d call it.

Pandora for iPhone.

You’ve got no idea how extremely cool that is.

Sure, it’s probably going to eat up my battery like crazy, but I don’t care.

Pandora for iPhone. Wow.

Pandora Radio – Listen to Free Internet Radio, Find New Music

Impeach Bush

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the petition: “Support Rep. Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment”

Please take a moment to read about this important issue, and join me in signing the petition. It takes just 30 seconds, but can truly make a difference. Please sign here:

Impeach Bush.

Once you have signed, you can help even more by asking your friends and family to sign as well.

Thank you!

Vegan Zombie

I’m a big fan of zombie fiction and yet I find myself in a bit of a pickle. (I love that expression.) I’m pro-zombie, but I just can’t get behind what they eat.

The folks at Serious Eats have turned me on to an alternative I hadn’t considered:

If, however, you insist on feeding your zombie the usual stuff, Serious Eats has also provided a helpful food pyramid for your reference:

The Lighted Candle Society

We don’t have data that says what the long-term outcome of pornography use in marriage or open marriages are and so it becomes very irresponsible to be promoting something that there are clear risks and hazards associated with it.

Hi kids! It’s time for our favorite game here on RebeccaHartong.net! Yes, it’s time to…

Spot the logical fallacies!

Okay. Let’s just consider this to be just a warm-up round, since the fallacies in the statement I quoted are so glaringly obvious. Did you see them? Of course you did!

1. Conflation!
   Conflation is where two distinct concepts are treated as though they were one. In this example, pornography use within marriage is treated as though it were the same thing as “open marriage” where partners are free to have sexual relationships with other people. [And do check out the link for Conflation. If any group has experience with logical fallacies, it's the Creation Science people! In fact, they demonstrate several fallacies in the course of defining them! It's most amusing.]
2. Appeal to ignorance!
   An appeal to ignorance (also called “arguing from ignorance”) occurs when a person assumes that because the truth of a premise isn’t known for sure, it’s reasonable to assume that it IS true. Since they don’t have data about the long-term effects, there’s really no rational basis for assuming that porn use has “clear risks and hazards”.

But this is all academic. You really need to watch this video and then visit the sites for both The Lighted Candle Society and it’s “sister site” Her Story Lives. The first is a general anti-porn organization and the second is a site for women (primarily) to discuss how their spouse’s porn use has messed up their lives.

To be honest, my first inclination with the “Her Story Lives” web site was to mock these women. But, I suppose that the husband’s porn use really is a big problem in some marriages and, for women who haven’t felt like they could talk about it with anyone, a web site like that probably is helpful. I do think, though, that attacking porn itself is a waste of time and energy. When a person is compulsive about their porn use, the source of the problem is within the person himself. Lots of people use porn in a responsible way that doesn’t mess up the rest of their lives. It’s like with liquor. Most people who use it are “social drinkers” — not raging alcoholics. The difference comes from within the individual. The Lighted Candle Society people will try to persuade you that there’s science backing up their claim that pornography is “addictive” but that’s simply not true. For a full discussion, I refer you to Penn & Teller’s recent episode of Bullshit!: “War on Porn”.

Anyway. Here’s the video I was quoting up above. They would have done so much better if they hadn’t chose an opening narration by a woman with an unusually irritating whiny voice. Her voice makes me want to hunt her down, smack her up side the head and yell at her, “Snap out of it, for God’s sake! Get yourself a vibrator and tell your husband to go fuck himself!” Enjoy!

Embedded video removed since it seems to be screwing things up for some Windows users. God, how I hate Windows. What a complete piece of CRAP of an operating system! Anyway, click on this paragraph to see the video on the Youtube site.

Stupid Email from Democrats.com

Our longtime progressive champion, Senator Ted Kennedy, made a dramatic return to the Senate on Wednesday to cast the deciding vote on a crucial Medicare bill. (That’s his niece Caroline Kennedy with him.)

Sadly, George Bush wants to veto the bill. For Kennedy’s sake, let’s try to stop him.

Say what?? 

I don’t know anything about the Medicare bill, but if I were going to try to stop Bush from vetoing it, it would be because the bill is worthwhile. It wouldn’t be for Kennedy’s sake. 

What a really stupid tactic on the part of Democrats.com. Sorry to say, there are probably plenty of people who base their political opinions on the personality or fame of the person doing the talking — but is that really the kind of people you want to appeal to? 

Heh…maybe. 

Argh.