The Akismet plugin for my WordPress journal is one of the best features for controlling unwanted comment spam! It comes as a standard plugin with the WordPress install, but you have to activate your account with WordPress.org to make it function properly. Akismet works so well that I almost never have to do anything more than the occasional plugin update, but when I do check up on it I’m always impressed to see the stats for the amount of comment spam it’s blocked.
I just ran some reports for the last half of 2009 and was very pleased with the results of both the Akismet plugin and the WordPress Publishing platform as a whole!
Oceanimagery.com/journal/ – The 9 most popular posts of all time…
I am selling one of my vehicles on Craigslist and thought it might get a little more attention if I posted it here on my Website as well. This has been a really great vehicle for me over the years, but it is finally time to part with it… mostly because I have a new truck and no longer drive this one. Ive added the Craigslist posting link to this post so if you have time take a look!
UPDATE: Vehicle sold in less then 24 hours!! You just have to love Craigslist…
I subscribe to a number of different video podcasts which include everything from financial market reports and world news to modern cooking and photography techniques. They all help fulfill my need for information, but when I need a good laugh I can always count on one of my favorites… “The Tiki Bar.” In this episode (#39 – Backstage Bender) the cast puts together some of their best outtakes and bloopers for our viewing pleasure… Enjoy!!
WordPress v2.6 was just released a couple of days ago, and as a result the auto-update feature in my online journal has prompted me to upgrade. I always get a little nervous about making big changes to server side applications where PHP code is concerned! This is partly because I’ve had issues in the past with these ‘simple’ upgrades crashing my online journal. Most of the time it happens because of a third party plug-in that doesn’t play well with the newer versions of WordPress. Regardless I always backup my files and take a quick look at the new code before I do anything.
I have included a cool 3.5 minute video clip that shows some of the new features in WordPress v2.6:
What’s new in WordPress v2.6 – embedded WP flash video
Don’t get me wrong… I think WordPress Rocks!! I’ve been using the application on my server since the first part of 2006 with very little in the way of problems (that is after the first 3 months of modifying the code to fit my needs and look of my Website!) So now it’s all about making sure that I don’t accidentally over-write one of the PHP scripts which I modified in the first place. When upgrading WP it asks you to overwrite the entire directory with the newly downloaded directory. The entire application consists of over 300 different PHP scripts, so you really have to remember which ones you modified and protect them from the overwriting process.
I will probably do the upgrade this weekend when I have a clear head and can sit down and focus on the task. If all goes well the journal should only be down for 30 to 40 minutes! Wish me luck…
Well Julie and I have finally done it… We’ve bought a boat! I’ve been looking to get a nice boat for some time now and after much research we decided to go with a Sea Ray! We found a very well maintained 2006 Sea Ray 320 Sundancer (which is classified as a ’sport cabin cruiser’) for sale at a local marina and decided to throw an offer at the owner to see how eager he was to sell. Our offer was quite a bit less than what he originally wanted for the boat, but he jumped at it anyway.
Doug and Larry bringing the boat into PWM for the pre-purchase Inspection
I found out later that boat sales have been way down and this boat had been on the market for over 6 months! What really grabbed me about the boat is that it came with a transferable extended warranty that covers ‘everything’ until the end of 2012! We take delivery of it this coming Friday… See ya on the River!! (photos & more »)
After getting cleaned up from our last dive, we relaxed with a glass of wine as we waited for Marnie to brief us on what we could expect during the Village visit this evening. I had already removed my camera from my underwater housing, changed lenses and prepped it for the land excursion, so I was pretty much all set when Marnie called us all to the skiff for the ride over. (photos & more »)
Welocme to the ‘New’ 2008 Ocean Imagery Photography online web journal. Over the next several weeks I will be conducting a series of tests and making a lot of theme/content changes to this journal. Feel free to add your comments and suggestions to this or any of our journal posts, while this part of our Web site is being re-developed and tweaked to better match the rest of our site’s theme! Thank you for your support…
A little background on the ‘New’ Web site:
Over the past month I have been in the process of building a new server to host my Web sites. Hardware has never been my problem… I can put just about anything together and make it work! But tweaking it and setting up the software is another story. For this project I have had to go ‘back to school’, so to speak, in order to learn how to read & write PHP script. As this online journal starts to take form, you will find that it is much easier to navigate and more user friendly than the old one. Once I’m sure that the security I have in place is tight enough, I will open the journal up to my friends so that they may register as ‘users’ and place their own posts as well as comment on the posts that I make. Stay tuned… there will be more to follow!!
I have finally finished fixing my house up for sale and listed it on the market! My realtor has warned me that the market is in pretty poor shape and right now is not the best time to be selling a house. At the same time I don’t have a choice as Julie and I have already purchased and moved into our new home. I guess there isn’t much one can do about the timing of things, but I don’t believe that dropping the price on a home to make a quick sale is the way to go either. After all, people put a lot of time and energy into their homes over the years and to have to settle for less than what it’s truly worth all because of the ‘timing’… well, that just isn’t fair!
Any way, I have a little time still before I get desperate about selling… so for now, I’ll hold out and see what the market does for the first quarter of 2008!
This year Julie and I made plans to spend Thanksgiving with her family in St. Michaels, Maryland. In the past, I have always gone home to spend Thanksgiving with my parents. It’s not just the fact that my Mother is a great cook, it’s also important to me to spend quality time with the ones I love and don’t get to see often enough.
This goes both ways now that Julie and I are married… now there are ‘two families’ that we have to think about spreading our time between, so we have decided to alternate the holidays between each family and each year. This year we spent Thanksgiving with Julie’s family and next year it will be with mine… that’s as fair of a trade off you can get I think.
We did have a great time in St. Michaels (as we always do) and it is always nice to spend time with Julie’s folks. However, it was unfortunate that Julie’s sister and her kid’s were unable to attend this year due to issues with her husbands company. We really did miss you guys and we hope you had a nice turkey day and all is well up North! We will get together soon!!
Some photos from Thanksgiving in St. Michaels» (Coming Soon!)
Ah Yes… who can’t help but love the joy’s of moving! You never know what you have until… you try to cram it all into a moving truck. Stuff, stuff and more stuff… people in general have a tendency to collect stuff and I must admit that I am no different. What happened to the good old single days of living in a one bedroom apartment and traveling out of a duffel bag? It was so easy to move back then… you just threw everything into the back of a pickup truck and you were done!
Animals are so lucky in the respect that they have no extra baggage. Except for their young, they have nothing they have to take or worry about when they migrate. Must be nice to be baggage free!
I’ll try to put together a photo gallery of both Julie’s move and mine later on! Stay tuned….!
Dylan Michael Vanderbilt, born Feb. 9, 2010 @ 3:30 pm... Welcome to the world, my son!!!! 2010-02-09
Well it looks like today is going to be the day... 2010-02-09
I was looking forward to going to work today, but thanks to the wonderful snow removal services of Arlington Co. it's just not gonna happen! 2010-02-08
Okay, I am so freakin' over this snow crap... someone please make it stop!!!! 2010-02-06
OMG!!!... We are gonna get so much snow it's not even funny any more!!!! 2010-02-06
