Dr. Mike's Steak Dinner

How to Win at Tic-Tac-Toe

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:38:05 -0500

Ever want to win (or at least draw) at Tic Tac Toe? Here's your chance now as I've come across a strategy guide on How to Win at Tic Tac Toe. The guide promises that you'll never lose at the game if you follow the advice given.

Now you can beat that pesky 5 year old cousin of yours. ;)

It's alive! IT'S ALIVE!!!

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:47:59 -0500

Yup, still alive and kicking. As noted earlier, I'm in the process of moving all of my sites onto a small VPS instead of having them scattered around the net. Been having problems as I'm also using the experience to install Nginx and learn it as it's a webserver I've not used before. Setting up the basic server wasn't too hard although php kept crashing every time I turned away from it. (That was those Bad Gateway errors folks were seeing.) Getting cgi's to run on Nginx wasn't fun either. Thanks to all those who emailed to let me know that there was a problem.

Part of the reason why I'm doing this, outside of a legal opinion that got handed down to me concerning my hosting and what I get in trade to host some sites, was that I really need a proxy to view the web here in the library. They just censor too many sites and I have to keep firing up Tor to get around their blocks when I'm trying to help folks. (OK, that last link only had a single return but I hope you get the idea.)

All of my sites should be working again although there is the occasional issue. Search and the tags here don't currently work since I'm having problems with the rewrite rules. (Note to self: Post about it to hopefully get some help.) Nginx's error logs are empty but I did find the fix for that. I added a bunch of photos to the Gallery install if you want to check them out. Hopefully I can re catalog them shortly.

Please let me know if you see something broken.

Trying to remember a specific science fiction novel

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 11:36:24 -0500

I posted this on the Unshelved Answers forums but I thought I would post about it as well. I've been trying to remember this title for quite some time now. It was one of the books I lost with Angie. I was in the middle of it when I had my health problems back in 1999 so I would like to finish it.

Greets:

Just going to throw this out an yet another attempt to see if anyone remembers it. It's an Apocalyptic setting where the main character, I believe a young female, is undergoing her adulthood trial which consists of climbing a mountain. At the top she discovers aliens living there.

I remember it being a Science Fiction Book Club title as I received it in the same shipment as Nancy Kress' Beggars of Spain so that would put it 1993ish.

It's not Battlefield Earth which usually gets suggested to me when I ask.

Thanks, -drmike

We've moving

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:15:55 -0500

Greets:

Just a quick mention that I'm moving sites around today. I bought myself a small VPS for my Christmas present this year and am spending the day moving the sites over to it. Things may be broken for a bit. Just a heads up. :)

thanks,
-drmike

edit: Quick Web got back to me to let me know that they have a coupon for a 25% discount recurring for the life of the account. If you pick up a XEN VPS, be sure to enter XEN25 during check out. (I think it says so on their site but just to throw that in there.)

Silly Spammers

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 07:20:44 -0500

I get the silliest comments left by spammers on my sites.

"The thing is I already knew this info but never implemented it"

I'm so glad that Cynix Hood was worth that much for you. :)

edit: It's a pity though that the spammer is using deviantart for their crud. Link added here so I can follow up on it later on. It's been reported though.

I learned something today

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:27:09 -0500

Yup, still alive. Bellringing is all over with and I'm playing catch up as quickly as I can. In the middle of some projects.

Anyway I've learned that learned that silk screened shirts should be washed inside-out to maximize their longevity. I didn't know that. Had tons of them after college that I wore quickly over the years that Angie kept nagging me about. I wonder if they would have worn better if I had done that.

I mostly wear collared polo shirts now a days.

Now you learned something as well. :)

An Early Christmas Present: Demonoid is Back Online

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:32:46 -0500

Just yet another quick mention in case you didn't see the article on Torrent Freak that Demonoid is back online and sort of working. The forums are still offline but maybe that's a good thing as it'll give the moderators a chance to review the rules one more time and hopefully pay attention to this this time around. The servers still seem to be stressed a bit as 404's and Server overloaded errors abound.

The tracker has been up for awhile now. The indexer and the main site have now returned.

Yes, I have invites but no I'm not giving them out as I don't want to put my own account at risk. (edit: I think waiting until they resolve the rest of their issues would be best anyway before overtaxing their servers with new users.)

Neville Would Have Done It In Four Books

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:11:41 -0500

Yup, I like T-Shirts. (Especially when there's a cute babe in them.) I had dozens of them when I was in college. Most of them were fairly well warn out by the time Angie showed up in my life. I know she was eying them hoping that I would get rid of them. (Me wear sweaters? Eeew! *shudder*) Just because there was a few holes in them. They weren't that bad.

Anyway I was poking around Topato and noticed this shirt created by the folks from Sam and Fuzzy: The Neville Would Have Done It In Four Books shirt.

Yup, it's more Harry Potter stuff. I've blogged about Harry Potter previously. Who can forget 50 Things NOT To Do At Hogwarts?

Could Neville done it in four books? I have to wonder. I've always taken the view that while the Harry Potter books were fairly tight, I always wanted to know more about the school and what was happening in the background. The movies are known for cutting parts out of the books. If I said that Neville could have done it in four books, that means even more would have been taken out.

Open Sourcing the YouTube Download Script? Yea or Nay?

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:22:16 -0500

Every once in a while, I get either the urge or an email begging me to Open Source the Download from YouTube script. The idea of doing so has been in the back of my mind for quite some time although managing yet another project isn't on the top of my list. (Anyone remember that Supermarket script I wrote a few year back?)

The idea of doing so was raised in a pair of emails this morning that showed up in my inbox. One of them basically consisted of "PLZ!!!! U SEND ME YOUTUBE SCRITP? ME WANT NOW!!!!!" That really makes me want to do it.

A couple of years ago, I got offered $500 for both the site and the domain. Silly me turned them down as I kind of liked the idea of having something of my own to work on. I had plans for the domain as well.

One of the problems with releasing the code is the question of licensing of the actual code. The original code that I downloaded many years ago didn't include any licensing with the file. I've tried to contact the original author on a number of occasions, both with questions about the licensing as well as fixes for the code. Since the code file that is still available still consists of the original code that no longer works and the developer has never replied, I don't think he's too interested in the project any more.

The code is a mess though. I've built onto the original download with my own code and there's a lot of hacks in there. Doing a complete from the ground up rewrite would probably be best. Get around any licensing issues as well.

I have to admit that I've had a bunch of additions I've always wanted to add on to it. A thumbnail of the video would be great. (The Download Videos from Dailymotion site has this.) Stats like the last ten videos downloaded or what's popular would also be a plus. Stuff like that I've wanted to add in would be great. Actually having instructions would also be a plus.

Anyone care to weigh in? (Hopefully with an intelligent response?)

Standing on the Sidewalk

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:33:36 -0500

I haven't done one of these in ages. My thanks to The Angst Guy for uploading this to the Daria Wiki.

Daria: Jane, you dyed your hair again, didn't you?

Jane: Um, no.

Daria: And it's green this time. Why green?

Jane: I've over here, Daria.

Daria: And why are you standing there with your arms up like that?

Jane: Daria, put on your glasses.

Anyone else care to come up with a caption?

How Popular Is Your Site? Find Out With This Link Popularity Checker

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:08:48 -0500

This script comes from the fine folks over at Site Expert. (Oooooo, they even have a color chart.) Using this tool, you can check to see how many indexed backlinks lead to your site in such search engines as Google, Yahoo, Bing, and a number of others.

The cool thing about the tool is that is actually gives you the numbers on the result page. Some link popularity checkers only give you the links to the search engines themselves or make you jump through hoops to get the report. This tool actually shows you the number of indexed links back.

So tell me how it works. Feel free to brag about your link popularity numbers in the comments if you want.

Link Popularity Checker

Don't forget out the other tools such as our Youtube Video Downloader, the Whois lookup and the new DailyMotion Video Downloader.

Image from here: I'm Only Popular on the Internet and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic.

What's The Difference Between a Geek and a Nerd?

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:41:11 -0500

I'm still plugging away at my collection of books over at Librarything. While I'm waiting for a set to finish uploading to my iPod Touch so I can read them later, I noticed this post on the Librarything blog. It's an attempt by John Dalton, LibraryThing's systems administrator, to demonstrate the difference between geeks and nerds.

Have You Been Penalized By Google? Find Out With Seo Penalty

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:58:33 -0500

A common question folks ask is if their site has been penalized by Google and it's Googlebot. It does happen if webmasters use too many tricks to promote their website and if and when Google catches on to what they're doing. Things like hiding links, overloading pages with keywords, bugging Google with update notifications, and the like will tick off the search engine giant and get your site removed from Google's database.

Is there an easy way to check? Head over to SEO Penalty and put the domain of the site in question in their form. You'll receive a rating back ranging from 0 to 10 on how much Google has downgraded your site. Zero means fine and dandy while a ten means they've caught on and you need to clean up your act.

Want to know more about Google Penalty and how to deal with it? Give this article a read.

Download Dailymotion Videos Beta Test

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:45:17 -0500

I've been working on a Dailymotion Video Downloader for the last few days as I teach myself some AJax and jQuery and anything other weird name you can throw in there. The code is still rough. You'll see the beta code output when you try it. Please give it a try and let me know how it works for you. If you need a video, you can try this one of the World's Greatest Toilets found in Videogames. I still have to clean out the beta code and fixing the download links is also needed. *.mp4's come down as *.h264 files. I don't think that'll work for most folks.

And if you want to Download Youtube Videos, you know where you can do that as well. That site is heading for a redesign as well.

The Public Library Of Charlotte Mecklenburg County Censors An Anti-WordPress Site

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:32:55 -0500

I wasn't planning on writing about my local library this morning but my hand has been forced by their actions. I've complained previously about their Internet connection in the past and met with some results. Granted that was after literally years of complaining. I've been meaning to complain about a recent experience in the West Blvd. branch where card playing for money (what you and I would call gambling) was occurring, right underneath the eye of the security guard on duty, and how I still haven't heard back from the library administration as to why this is allowed by their policy. (That was the guard's excuse to let it continue.)

wordpressâ„¢ wank has been blocked by the library. That's right. The leading site that tells the truth about Matt Mullenweg and the sad shape of ethics over at Automattic has been censored by The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County.

The irony of this is that their own blog is hosted on the wordpress.com servers. That's right. The library who last year tried to get the entire Charlotte community to read and discuss To Kill a Mockingbird, a book that has been censored many times previously, as no problems with censorship and racism themselves. (Which makes for even more irony.) I guess their stated goal of "of expanding minds, empowering individuals and enriching the community" doesn't apply when it concerns a vendor of theirs. Can't empower individuals when you deal with a company that believes discussion shouldn't be open. Can't strive to make information available to anyone who wants it when that information is locked away behind an Internet proxy.