Key Our Cars

Firefox may not be winning the war for the world but I’m happy to see that it’s winning the war among my visitors, at least among those that were able to be deciphered.  From a security standpoint it’s mo’ betta’.  And if you want even more security IMO you’ll switch to Google Chrome.  There’s just something about a browser that if one tab dies it doesn’t take all the other tabs down with it and if a plugin dies on the tab it doesn’t take the tab down with it that I have to like.

My visitor stats for the last couple of months -

April 1 2010 – May 31 2010
Basis:  88795 results from 167829 unique visits of which 79034 unknown/could not be evaluated.

1	Mozilla	30843	34.74%
2	Internet Explorer	25371	28.57%
3	Google Robot	9815	11.05%
4	Safari	7998	9.01%
5	Yahoo Robot	7314	8.24%
6	MSN Robot	4104	4.62%
7	Opera	1814	2.04%
8	Netscape	869	0.98%
9	Ask Jeeves Robot	314	0.35%
10	Alexa Robot	155	0.17%
11	Java	142	0.16%
12	WAP Mobile	36	0.04%
13	Camino	9	0.01%
14	Wget	6	0.01%
15	Konqueror	4	0.00%
16	HTTrack	1	0.00%

I upgraded to WordPress 2.9.2 this morning or tried to, so if you see any issues with things not working please drop me a note.

It’s not easy to upgrade to 2.9.2 on 1and1.com.  They’re using MySQL 4.0.x and 2.9.2 requires 4.1.2 and better.  But they do give you access to MySQL 5.0.x you just have to migrate your existing database over to it. Manually.

I was able to find some notes on workarounds but they didn’t work as well for me due to the size of my database.  I ended up having to create the new database in chunks, not difficult since I’m pretty familiar with SQL (certified by Microsoft even) but annoying.  But eventually I got it all working.  I think.

On the plus side I was able to do a lot of database cleanup, dropping old unused tables and optimizing existing ones so the new database is much cleaner and in theory should be a little faster.  Although it’s on different hardware so it’s a crapshoot.

I also took the downtime to update the ‘captcha’ mechanism which seems to generate less obscure, aka hard to get right, human verification checks.  But with 100′s to 1000′s of script based spam, primarily porn and grey market drugs, in comments a day I’m just not able to have an open comments (non admin approved before it posts) section or an easy to bypass mechanism.

Just wanted to pass along some information I gleaned while trying to build a hackintosh with a Dell C521 with an NVidia card.  It took a long time and a lot of rebuilds to get a fully functional device and most of it was trial and error so I thought I’d share.

I ended up trying EVERY distro of 0sx86 out there before I found the right combination of things to get a 10.5.8 working edition.

To sum up – I started with iDeneb 10.5.5 as the base.  This was the ONLY build higher then 10.4 that would even install.  All the rest of them give me the gd “Still waiting for root device” error that’s so prevelent.  I tried using external DVD, external HD, etc. to get around this error but to no avail. The Dell BIOS prevents me from changing the drive compatibility settings and the hardware doesn’t have an IDE connector which prevented me from trying those options.

So I installed with 10.5.5 using the following patches – AMD Fix,  9.0.2 Speedstep, AppleAzalia sound, the ATA Test (the one that’s labled use this if your SATA drive doesn’t work), the AppleBMC440 network driver.  This gives me a working 10.5.5 system.

Next up was trying to get a 10.5.7 or 10.5.8 system.  This failed miserably with every distro, iDeneb, Kalyway, XxX, iATKOS, 10.5.6, 10.5.7, 10.5.8 they all failed to even start the install because of the Still waiting for root device.

So tried to upgrade in place.  Again, failure.

Finally I did manage to get it working and this is how -

Get a 10.5.5 install working (as described above).

Start osx86tools and backup the extensions, don’t close it!

Run the iDeneb 10.5.8 combo update.  don’t restart!

Restore the extensions you just updated.

Now restart.

This worked for me, fully working video, lan, DVD, sound.

I installed the iPhone SDK without any problem and was able to make a quick app and run it in the iphone emulator.

It restarts and shutsdown without hanging as well.

It won’t though recognize USB memory sticks without a reboot.  Not a huge deal for me so I’m not going to bother with it right now.

The only thing I haven’t as of yet gotten working at all is a Zyxel G-202 usb wireless that I have laying around.  But this is a problematical for everyone from what I hear.

I’ve implemented a Widget Cacher to the site here, that along with WP-Cache significantly reduced the page creation size.  It’s typically sub 1 second to create the page now and there’s only around 20′ish SQL queries per page hit which is pretty good.

What does this mean?  Nothing much, it’s a geek thing but for the end users (you and your brethren) this means the page will load faster.  Of course you still have to pull in all the images which if this is your first time here can be costly.  1&1, my host, recently screwed up something and now my thumbnail generation doesn’t work so all the images for the last few posts are resized full size images rather than actual thumbs.  This isn’t the first time they’ve screwed this up.  We’ll see how long they take to fix it…

Image Credits

If you’re using Word Press and are having problems with HTTP or Internal Server Error 500 errors when you upload an image then try putting the below in your .htaccess file in the root of your WordPress install folder.

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

This forces your server to use php 5 rather than defaulting to php 4 when it does the image upload/resize/thumbnail create.

Can you imagine having one of these? Imagine having mini’s with bar coded bases that automatically show line of sight? Being able to drop a ‘fireball’ where the sorcerer casts it and see who it affects? Mapping with your fingers? It’s not quite ‘star wars holographic chess’ but holy crap it’s more than halfway there.