Lee.org

The new WordPress 2.5.0 image upload system has several issues. I likely won’t upgrade to 2.5 until they are fixed. I like using Flexible Upload with WP 2.3 better because it…

• is faster, no need to open up a modal window to go looking for images
• fits on one screen, to get to the the button for saving the image in WordPress 2.5, you have to pick up the mouse and scroll down
• is more flexible, you can specify the size of the thumbnail on the fly
• defaults can be changed, unlike WP 2.5.

And I’m the named artist. :-)

Of course, SWARM is actually a rag tag fugitive fleet of about 25 people. But this is still pretty dern cool.

Click Here
Column in The Panther for April, 2004
By Lee C. Sonko

Our announcement email mailing list is still in the works. By the time you read this, it might be ready. Check out our web site, www.pvpoa.com to see!

You can now view The Panther on the internet. Just go to www.pvpoa.com/thepanther. We’re hoping to have several years of back issues online eventually. This will be a great historical site for The Valley. Continue reading ‘Click Here April 2004’ »

For the last 2 months or so I’ve been taking poi spinning classes with Jon Dickinson of Fire Arts Academy and Fire Arts Collective. All I’ve got to say is that he’s really good… a very good teacher in a good physical space with good students and… well, if you’re going to learn to spin poi, I highly recommend him.

Here’s his recent flier. If you missed these sessions, never fear, the cycle will repeat at some point!

Fire Arts Academy is offering sessions of Poi & Staff classes in Oakland. FAA is now taking registration for poi & staff classes in Oakland starting Tuesday March 11th. Private classes in San Francisco and weekend workshops are available, please contact us or check our website. Continue reading ‘I Spin Poi’ »

Internet Explorer viewers of this blog can now see what Firefox viewers have been enjoying for the last year or so…

The green bar behind “Lee.org” at the top of the blog wasn’t visible in IE til I fixed a .css file. Actually, the issue was that IE didn’t follow CSS specs, but it’s hardly worth griping about. IE 6 doesn’t see the background image in my CSS file when it reads as such:

background-image: /* url("http://lee.org/blog/images/reason-villege-old-spring-green.jpg");*/

url("http://lee.org/blog/images/reason-villege-old-spring-green-right-justified.jpg");

I suppose it’s because IE sees the text being on 2 lines (there’s a carriage return in there)   as being 2 elements. But I’m not going to spend any more energy figuring it out.

The writing actually phonetically spells my name in Japanese. Logically, it’s an odd collection of thoughts… “Lee” sounds like “Reason”. Then “Son” and “ko” sound like “village” and “old”.

I have to thank Miki Kawabe for the translation. At Burning Man in 2004, we won the Second Annual Semi-authentic Finnish Wife Carrying Event. We won her weight in beer.

Yes, really!

update 1-16-10: I’ve been using only WP Super Cache for a while now. It’s great.

We’ll see how well installing Super Cache goes…

update 4-20-09: I replaced Super Cache with Hyper Cache and DB Cache. Look.

update 3-26-08: after a day, it’s starting to look pretty super! Page load times are super-fast. :-) And if (ahem) my SQL server is running slow, the blog isn’t slowed down at all unless you try writing (IE, leaving a comment)

update 3-27-08: WP Super Cache is a keeper. It’s got 2 parts, WP-Cache that runs PHP and does database calls only if it the current cached version isn’t up-to-date and/or there is no cached version. There may have been changes at Dreamhost but it seems that Super Cache is a faster WP-Cache than WP-Cache.

The second part, Super-Cache is just supa fast. It kicks in for people that aren’t logged in and don’t have a cookie showing that they’ve commented recently. This serves cached blog files as fast as flat html files. While in this second mode, viewers sometimes miss new comments and changes to pages until the cache times-out, which isn’t a big deal for people that have never commented (and therefore likely don’t really care if they see a new comment in 5 seconds instead of 6 hours)

update 4-3-08: Oh yeah, it’s a total keeper. I like seeing my site load this fast.

FYI, here is my .htaccess file for 0.6.1

# Begin Sitemap. See... http://blog.leion.net/2006/06/02/adding-human-readable-google-sitemap/
AddType application/xml .xsl
# End Sitemap
# BEGIN WPSuperCache
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*s=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*(comment_author_|wordpress|wp-postpass_).*$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/blog/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/blog/$1/index.html.gz -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) /blog/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/blog/$1/index.html.gz [L]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.*s=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*(comment_author_|wordpress|wp-postpass_).*$
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/blog/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/blog/$1/index.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) /blog/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{HTTP_HOST}/blog/$1/index.html [L]
</IfModule>
# END WPSuperCache
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress


2 weeks ago I found a CMS system called Pligg. Before using it, I took a look at the blog on the site. I noted what looked like an overly emotional post about Dreamhost and a billing problem they had recently.

The line was crossed not when they billed me prematurely for two years of service, but rather when they issued an apology email and blog post which felt unapologetic and insincere.

Dreamhost’s blog post opened “Um, Whoops” and had an image of Homer Simpson holding up his finger, an arrow pointing to his finger saying “fat finger”. The post was in Dreamhost’s usual overly plucky tone. If you’ve ever gotten one of their monthly updates, you’d know what I’m talking about. Every one is a parody of itself it’s so plucky… It’s their shtick.

I wrote on Pligg’s blog a comment describing what I thought about Pligg’s criticism. The comment didn’t show up immediately, the system said it had entered moderation, which is a common spam filtering method. I was very surprised when I came back a week later and my comment hadn’t been posted. So I posted it again. A week later, still nothing. Apparently, moderation isn’t just for spam but for differing opinions as well.

My comment was mostly a response to Eric “Yankidank” Heikkinen’s followup comment to his post

January 17th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

Transparent about the whole thing? You mean admitting to charging users $7.5 million that they don’t owe? Dreamhost is a host I have supported for a long time, but their friendly/amateur approach to everything isn’t something that I’m comfortable with in situations like yesterdays debacle. I am especially upset when I feel that a sincere apology is due and they take their usual playful route “oops, we have a fat finger that caused some users to be billed for thousands of dollars”. Granted the charges were reversed within 24 hours…

Here is the comment I was trying to leave on the Pligg blog. Admittedly, it’s a bit sarcastic, but I welcome comments about it (unlike Mr Heikkinen)

>but rather when they issued an apology email and blog post which felt
>unapologetic and insincere

Would the insincere part be the part where they explained exactly what went wrong, why it went wrong, how the problem was fixed, and how they made sure it wouldn’t happen again? Or is it the part about how this problem was discovered and remedied within hours? Maybe it was the part about taking full responsibility for the problem and then doing something about it. Any way you slice it, I see what you mean. I wouldn’t trust Dreamhost after this either.

>Dreamhost has lost our endorsement

And Pligg has lost mine. He he. Pretty funny, huh?

In a recent calendar update from Scott at PlantTrees.org, Scott interjected this one-liner:

High-Fructose Corn Syrup, High Fat Diet = Severe   Liver Damage http://www.naturalnews.com/022836.html

I emailed a response to him today saying:

Scott,
You would do well to point out some of the other studies that indicate animals fed on high fat diets (sans high-fructose corn syrup) in a sedate lifestyle is also bad for 2 and 4 legged creatures. This recent mania about high-fructose corn syrup doesn’t seem overall helpful for the people or the land. This single product is not solely responsible for the many ills that have been attributed to it. Making it a scapegoat misdirects where the critisism should really lie. The real reasons for poor health are nearly as easily understood.

Here are some articles about fat-sans-high-fructose corn syrup that I am referring to:
http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/news/ng.asp?n=62967-liver-fat-sugar
http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2008/02/25/do_fast_food_binges_lead_to_liver_damage.php
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071101144851.htm
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/112228929/ABSTRACT?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Thanks and have a great day,
Lee Sonko
http://lee.org

Here’s how to get off junk mail lists

(via) and verified by my research

• Stop “prescreened” offers. Companies check your credit with the big credit reporting agencies all the time. Stop these offers and all those pre-approved credit card offers etc… go to www.OptOutPrescreen.com or call 1-888-567-8688.
• Get off telemarketers mailing lists with the federal Do Not Call list, www.DoNotCall.gov
• Tell the Direct Marketing Association you don’t want junk mail, www.dmachoice.org/consumerassistance.php
• Register at catalogchoice.org and decline individual catalogs that you already receive.
• Sign up for proquo.com and get off a bunch of junk mail lists.
• For all those catalogs you get because you bought something from them 10 years ago, call them or find them online and ask to be removed from their list.
• Get off the Redplum / Valassis faux-newspaper mailing list with ads from Safeway, Luckys etc
• Lots more tidbits

This is a continuation of a republishing of a series of articles I wrote titled “Click Here”. You can find them all under the Click Here Articles category in this blog.

Click Here
By Lee C. SonkoLast month I talked about some free internet services including Google.com. Today I want to warn you that not all “free” services are good for you and your computer. There are all sorts of programs that literally push themselves upon you while you’re surfing the internet. For example, if you are trying to go to Google.com but mistype it, writing “googl.com” instead, you are taken to a web site that tries to sell you all sorts of things; it even tries to change your homepage! How rude! Continue reading ‘Click Here February 2004: “Free” Services”’ »