# These rewrite rules took 3 afternoons to write!
#Please do not edit them without saving them first.

# uploaded files
RewriteCond Host: (?:www\.)?example\.com
RewriteRule »
^/([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+)/files/(.+) /wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$2
RewriteRule ^/files/(.+) /wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$1 [L]

# Redirect wp-admin to ensure it has a trailing slash
RewriteCond Host: (?:www\.)?themegacentre\.com
RewriteRule  ^/([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ /$1wp-admin/ [I,RP,L]

# Rewrite admin areas etc to the right files
RewriteCond Host: (?:www\.)?themegacentre\.com
RewriteRule »
^/([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(wp-admin|wp-content|wp-includes|wp-login\.php)(.*) »
/$2/$3 [I,L]

# Rewrite all other requests to the wordpress index.php files
RewriteCond Host: (?:www\.)?themegacentre\.com
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} »
!(wp-admin|wp-includes|wp-content|wp-login\.php|/files/)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php [I,L]

# Linebreaks which are not supposed to be
# there are marked »
# please remove them if you've just copied and pasted!

It is beautiful. It is ingenious. It is untested with uploaded files, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Please note that these files were not placed in a .htaccess file, but in the httpd.ini which is located in C:\Program Files\Helicon\ISAPI_Rewrite on that particular server.

I hope it helps someone out there who is currently pulling out their hair in terrible frustration!

Any questions or comments, please let me know. If you find a bug, or make an improvement, or find a feature that these rewrites don’t support — please tell me!

teapigs is exactly the kind of company I love — they’re personal and positive and about more than just profits, just like innocent smoothies, graze, Google, and about a billion other companies that I can’t think of right now.

Anyway, hop on over to teapigs.co.uk and buy yourself something nice :)

That was the tweet that came to me moments ago. But I didn’t tweet it because it suddenly started to take on epic proportions in my head, and as we are all aware, you can’t be epic in 140 characters.

(Well, actually, you can, it’s just I wanted to be waffly with this idea, and you can’t be waffly in 140 characters.)

(Dammit, well, yes you can probably be waffly in 140 characters. I guess “rambly” would be a better word, perhaps. Here’s my final statement on the matter: it’s hard, but not impossible — though certainly not half as much fun — to be rambly in 140 characters.)

Anyway, I suddenly began to feel really sorry for my sentences. It’s an awful thing to have a civil war, and I immediately wanted to bring resolution. But you can’t with an oxymoron! There is no resolution, because a sentence, once said, written, expressed — is immutable.

It made me want to start a kind of UN Peacekeeping Operation for words.

“O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!”

PS I just discovered this sentence on a letter I received this morning: “Please see the below details;”.

I suppose there are worse fates for words than the oxymoron.

I am ever astounded at where I find satisfaction. I always thought it would be in a really great job, something where I was saving the world on a regular basis, but apparently, no. You can find meaning in the nice, clean glass of your washing machine door. There it is folks. Who would have thought it.

The washing machine in question is currently doing a load. It’s on its last rinse cycle, and I’m enjoying the sound it’s making. I just walked past it and glanced in. You know, just to check on how things were doing. It reminded me of how as a kid I used to be mesmerised by our washing machine. It totally fascinated me. There’s something about spinning that I literally cannot take my eyes off. I think it’s because it’s continually moving but going nowhere.

You know, if ever I were to take up meditation, I would without a doubt use a washing machine as an aid. It totally absorbs my attention. In fact, just now I happened to look in, and found myself saying, “Wow, this is better than TV.” A bunch of clothes in a metal drum, soaked in soapy water — better than TV. What does that say about me? I think probably that I occupy some position on the autistic spectrum. Well, I am very proud to occupy whatever position I may occupy.

(By the way, isn’t it rotten that we label this on the same scale as a disorder? It totally stinks. By rights, “male” is a position on the autistic spectrum. So is “genius”. Can’t wait for society to wake up and let people be who they are without trying to cut them down or make everyone the same.)

All this has made me think about being a child, and about the bits of me that I have very stubbornly never allowed to grow up. For example, I still really like using an umbrella. I have defended this excitement, viciously and heroically, from all attempts at maturity. Why would anyone want to lose that? It makes rain fun!

So here is my musing: small pleasures have a surprisingly big impact on your happiness.

I just got my first box. It had olives, fresh pineapple slices, raisins and dried banana slices.

You can choose from their wide range what kind of things you like, and they store your choices, and send you selections based on that. You can get them every day, every week, or every fortnight. Or twice a week. Or three times. Or whatever.

Seriously, their selections are amazing. There’s honey roast cashews, salsa tossed almonds, chocolate coated pumpkin seeds, puffed rice crackers, white chocolate coated blueberries, dark chocolate coated cocoa beans … it’s just stunning. And healthy!

Check them out at graze.com. If you use my code (JZZTQMD), you get the first one free, then the second half price! Normally they’re £2.99 You also get a code that you can give to people, and when they sign up, you get £1 off! (I’ve already gotten £2, thanks people!!)

Anyway. It’s worth signing up, even if it’s just for the free one — and you can cancel whenever you like. Visit http://www.graze.com/p/JZZTQMD (discount code is prefilled for you).

It’s relatively easy to use it correctly. The rules are fairly simple, once you understand them. But to use it perfectly gives a sentence wings. It’s quite possibly the only thing you can add to a piece of bloated prose to make it lighter. When it’s used perfectly, the semi-colon is like a letterless super-word. It’s like an invisible hand that lifts your sentence into ethereal realms.

The corollary, of course, is that there is nothing more offensive in the English language (other than the word naivety — which, unhappily, is a word without an efficient synonym, otherwise I would never use it at all) than a misused semi-colon. Nothing sticks out more glaringly. When it’s used properly, it’s like a tiny, hair-thin component in some well-oiled machine. But when it’s used in the wrong place it sticks out like pube in a restaurant napkin — that you only discover after it’s too late, after it’s already started making its way across your palate to the back of your mouth.

The better something is, the more foully and more completely can it be corrupted. A frog, for example, can’t really be good or bad. Nor can a cow, in any meaningful sense, be thought of as wicked. You can have a bad dog, of course, and a reprehensible man, but it takes an evil genius to really wreak havoc.

Likewise, you can scatter your text with superfluous apostrophes, and you merely look like a jabbering, toothless, cross-eyed idiot who smells of cow manure. You can slash all of your sentences into pieces with dashes until nobody knows where they are any more, or overuse an ellipsis to give the impression that you struggle to draw breath — or worse, write them with too many or too few dots, as if hoping to alter the volume of your dramatic pause. You can even leave your sentences strewn with commas that are like spent underwear on a bedroom floor, tripping your readers up and disgusting them with your slovenly habits at the same time.

All these errors are ridiculous but, let’s be generous, forgiveable (at a stretch at least). It’s only with a semi-colon that you can truly pervert perfectly good orthography into something heinous, something that stings the eyes in the same way as cigarette smoke. Nothing kills copy quicker than a semi-colon dropped haphazardly into a sentence. Bam. Suddenly it ceases to be meaningful communication, and collapses immediately into a collection of strange curved lines that once had something to do with the alphabet.

Be warned, then, aspiring writers: the semi-colon is not to be trifled with. Use it with too much caution. Use it as a surgeon uses his scalpel (having undertaken meticulous study and training). If you get it right, you will delight your readers. Get it wrong and, well, thanks for coming.

Comparison happens because we are all different. It will probably always happen. But how you handle comparison is what can make it a good experience or a bad one.

Comparison can be a really destructive force. It can wreck your confidence, ruin your self-image, cause you to try to be something you’re not. It can poison friendships with jealousy. It can cause you to give up on something you enjoy doing, or that you’re good at. It can discourage you from reaching a goal. It can make you devalue your existing achievements.

This is bad comparison. There’s also good comparison. Good comparison is what happens when we meet an inspiring person. There’s a sense of admiration and also the feeling that you could do what they have done, or if not that, then something similar. Good comparison can cause you to move towards better things. It builds confidence. It makes you feel good about your future. It turns intimidation into inspiration.

It’s a bad one if it causes damage to your confidence, or if it causes you to give up. It’s a good one if you learn from it and grow from it.

Turning bad comparison into good comparison is simple, but takes a bit of effort. The basic rule is the same one that underlies good mental and emotional health. Apply positivity to negativity. Stick with that, for long enough, and you will see vast improvements over time.

There are two things that I do when I feel intimidated by someone else, and they both begin with A. Accept and Appreciate.

Accept

Acceptance is telling yourself the truth about a situation. It means you stop lying to yourself, and you’re honest with where you’re at. Here’s a truth that’s painful to accept at first: there will always be people better than you at any given task. Once we accept that and make peace with it, we will be a lot happier and a lot more productive. You’ll begin to realise that you’re valuable because you’re you, not because of what you’re good at.

Acceptance also means you accept yourself just as you are. We place all kinds of standards and requirements on ourselves that we have to meet before we’ll consider ourselves OK. This is a difficult barrier to overcome, but with persistence you can bring it down.

Sometimes just saying, “I like myself” can take the pressure off. Say this before you meet your goals. Say this even if you don’t have any goals. Having a kind and gentle attitude towards yourself is actually really important. It’s worth investing into, and it’s not a selfish thing to do.

Appreciate

Comparison very easily turns into jealousy. Jealousy happens when we’re done damaging our own self-image, so we move onto other people! When we’re jealous of someone, we start looking for ways to bring them down. We look for failings, character flaws, mistakes — anything that makes them look worse so we can feel better. It’s a really ugly attitude, and it doesn’t do anyone any good.

Jealousy is worse than a waste of time. It’s a harmful use of your time and energy. It damages you. Instead of allowing jealousy into your soul, find a way to appreciate that person and the talent that they have. Admire it like you’d admire a good painting, or a piece of music. Analyse how they do it to see if you can learn from them. If you know them well enough, ask them a few questions.

If it’s not possible to learn from them, just be happy for them. Do everything you can to apply positivity to negativity. If jealousy is a struggle for you, remember to treat yourself with patience and kindness while you’re learning to get it under control. Jealousy already beats you up on the inside — there’s no point beating yourself up any more!

I hope this helps. Comparison is something that can really do a lot of damage to people, I really hope that these ideas have inspired you!

Prayer should be raw. True. Honest. Say what you really think, otherwise you’ll go no-where. It should be instinctive. Intuitive. Pray for what you want, not for what you think you should want. And never feel guilty for praying for yourself.

Don’t do all the talking, however. Don’t pray and then hang up the phone. Keep listening. When God speaks it’s nothing flashy, most of the time. It sounds just the same as your own thoughts, only there’s a peace and a sense of life and cleanness about them. People either take spirituality too seriously, or they make it spooky. It’s neither, even though it is serious and it is “mystical”.

The word “spirit” is from the Latin word “spiritus” meaning breath. Spirituality is as ordinary, everyday and easy as breathing.

Stay alert for “promptings”. Sometimes it doesn’t feel right to be so “honest” (i.e. moan about something), but to be grateful, or to pray for someone else instead.

Yes, this makes me an awful geek, but it will save much of my sanity. I hope that this helps you as much as it will help me!

I’m a natural depressive and pessimist. That means, I immediately spot the problems in ideas, the costs, the downsides, the ways it won’t work, the reasons why we shouldn’t do it.

Let me tell you, if you’re the same type of person, that being loyal and faithful to that side of your character will close down your life. You will get smaller and smaller till one day you realise that you’ve no life to speak of. Better for that revelation to come when you’re still young than when you get old, believe me!

The trick is to keep building positivity. Invest into a habit of positive thinking. The more you do it, the better you’ll get. The more you train your brain to be positive, the more opportunities you’ll see for good things. Sometimes the trouble isn’t that there’s not any opportunities, it’s that you see them all as problems. Problems are opportunities, it just depends what glasses you have on: the rose-tinted ones or the poo-tinted ones (remember diamonds and dog turds?).

Poo-tinted glasses see the turd. Rose-tinted glasses see the diamond. I guess in “reality” both the diamond and the turd are there. In one sense, pessimists and optimists are both realists. It’s not so much a case of seeing problems/opportunities, it’s more a case of whether you value the benefits enough to pay the costs. If you’re starting a business, do you value it enough to go through the hard times setting it up? If you really want to build your own house, do you value that dream enough to go through budget problems and design flaws and materials running out, etc. Pessimists don’t care enough about the dream to go through all the hard work.

Building optimism is hard work, but the more you do it, the easier it gets: the less unpleasant it is to say yes to things you can’t be bothered to do and the more you enjoy the process of getting there.

Anyway, my question to you, my readers, is what should I do about the address? I have already bought some domain names for them, but can’t afford the hosting just yet. In the interim, which is better:

• joy.beingmrkenny.co.uk
• beingmrkenny.co.uk/joy

It’ll only be for about a year, but which do people find easier as a web address?

I’ve never really liked Microsoft’s offering to the search engine industry, mainly because I don’t like its online presence. I hate MSN, I hated hotmail, I don’t like Live mail. I think they are all inferior products, and I really can’t understand why people don’t make the switch to Google’s online products. Up until now I would never have given Microsoft’s search engine another look, but I don’t like things staying the same for too long so I thought I’d give it a spin.

Firstly, I think Bing is much prettier than Google. They have a new background image every day, and the whole design is obviously more deliberate than Google’s 1990s colour scheme. I appreciate that. I never liked Google’s boring logo, nor its ugly results page.

Also, the images search function is light years ahead of Google’s. With Google you get 20 pages of about 100 image thumbnails that you have to laboriously scroll through. With Bing you get a sidebar of thumbnails which is refreshed with Ajax. You never have to leave the page, and you can still view all of the thumbnails it finds. I like the efficiency, convenience and cleverness of it.

They’ve copied Google’s novelty logo idea. Google puts up a special image for Christmas, New Years’ and special occasions, like famous scientists’ birthdays. There the focus is on learning more about, e.g., the famous scientist. With Bing, it’s more about you using their search engine, which I don’t like. It’s a sneaky way of promoting yourself by promoting someone else. It’s funny to see how deep that runs in Microsoft. They’ve resisted web standards, preferring instead to release their own proprietary codes, right up until IE7. I really hate this tendency in Microsoft.

As for what was going through their heads when they called it Bing, I can only hazard a guess. It’s a dreadful, awful name. Interesting to see that they’re stepping away from all their other branding (Microsoft, MSN, Windows, Live, etc).

I hate, and will always hate, multimap. This is probably irrational, much like my hatred of Yahoo. And there’s video adverts on the main page. I hate video adverts.

As for the quality of its search results — obviously the most important thing — I haven’t really looked into it all that much. I guess my expectations in that area are mostly unconscious ones, so I’ll continue to do side-by-side comparisons for a while till I find out what I prefer.

So far, Bing doesn’t feel like proper searching yet. I must confess I don’t really care. (It’s not exactly the most hugely important question in life, is it.) What wins is whatever works easiest. Bing is pretty and excellent with images and media, but has a dreadful name. Google has a boring design, but it’s familiar.

It’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out in the long run. My personal prediction is that in a year or so they’ll have another rebrand (they’re on their fourth as it is). We’ll be introduced to “Swish”, or some other equally silly name, but unless they do something fundamental to searching online muchbetter than Google it will fail to raise much interest.

Maybe pay people every time they use Bing. And change that wretched name!

It was really good fun! I booked it about a fortnight ago, and it made me feel grown-up and responsible. I encourage you all to take your diary right now and book in a check up! (I also registered with a doctor a few months ago, and I have just filled out an electoral roll form — I am all about the taking responsibility at the moment).

The appointment went much as I expected it. I used to want to be a dentist when I was about 14 (ha ha!). This came about because we learned about teeth in biology, and I found the whole thing blindingly fascinating.

Isn’t that weird?

Interesting enough that, when I had 4 pre-molars taken out to make space for my crooked teeth to move about it, I kept them. I still have them today in a film cannister (remember them, before the days of digital cameras?). They’re about an inch long, with the root, and I think they’re pretty cool. I’ll show you them if you ask nicely.

Anyway, I listened to the dentist reporting the status of my teeth to her assistant, and I mostly knew what she was talking about. I actually quizzed her at the end of the appointment. I’m like some kind of dental geek. I asked her about my wisdom tooth, because she’d said, “8 … watch” so I thought “Uh-oh dental caries!” and it turns out I have a small one forming that may need filling, but maybe not. (Teeth are numbered 1-8, 1 being the incisors at the front, 8 being the wisdom teeth right at the back).

I’m a little sad about that, actually. My wisdom teeth are only about 6 years old, and they’ve still got that new feeling to them. Kinda like when you buy a new pair of shoes, except they’re smaller and in my mouth. And sharper, on average, than my other molars. It’s a shame that one of them already has signs of decay.

Anyhoo, turns out I need two small fillings in tooth 6 or 7, I forget which, so I’ve got another visit coming up in October.

Hooray for NHS dental treatment, by the way! I walked past the practise the day after it opened. How lucky! I bloody love the NHS. Goodness me, thanks to Obama and all the American opposition to health care reform — and all those snide comments from across the pond about the quality of our teeth — I suddenly feel very proud of my country and its fraught-with-problems health service (a friend and I recently spent 7 hours in A&E). It may be inefficient, but it beats the horrors of health insurance. Just ask any American family on low income.

P.S. Isn’t it great? This is the first silly post on this blog in a long time.

These things are truly painful circumstances to deal with. They’re burdens to carry.

The way to deal with them is to do just what you do with a burdern — bear it. Because these are problems that involve other people’s free will, you can’t solve them like you do other problems. Let’s not be lazy: you should try to solve them as and when you can. But do so with the utmost care, and recognise that A) it will take a long time, and B) it may never be solved.

So what do you do? Here you are with a big, emotionally costly problem that will be around for a long time.

The answer is to let the burden strengthen you, instead of weaken you. If your boss is unappreciative, stop trying to please him and just do the best you can, and count it all as generosity towards the company you work for. You end up being a bigger person as a result. If your friend is controlling and bossy, learn to stand up to it, and use the emotional pressure as a motivation to get some steel in your backbone. If your parents are critical, take the difficult but incredibly rewarding journey towards a more independent self-esteem.

Above all, learn forgiveness. Forgiveness isn’t for their benefit, it’s for yours. It doesn’t mean being a fool and staying open to the hurts, but it does mean refusing to see the other person as a monster and letting hatred eat you up on the inside. Twisting the knife only ever happens in your own guts!

(If you’re reading on Facebook, check it out at beingmrkenny.co.uk!)