OK, made a few more site changes. Clint and I were toying with the idea of changing the theme to be more plug-in friendly but I decided to go ahead and try to widgetize it anyhow. If I broke it, we’d have to change the theme and start over. Well, the widgetizing worked and now we’ve got a couple of new functionalities. First, on the right under Recent Posts, you’ll find Recent Comments. I’ve got the option of changing that so that it lists them in chronological order but I liked this better. Under Meta, you’ve also got the option of signing up for the Comments RSS so that you don’t miss one of Dina’s witty “You’re a geek” replies. Both of these are in response to J’s request for an email notification of new comments. Well, that ain’t happening because it requires a complete reorganization of the comment files with no guarantee that a) it will work or b) if it doesn’t work, it can be reversed. This will have to do. On a separate note, I took the PodTrac survey and it is not only anonymous but also way shorter than 2 minutes. More like 30 seconds. Take it if you have a moment to spare.

Oh yeah, and here’s that picture of Noah with his foot stuck in the port of my old sub.

But what good is it if nothing works together? Case in point. The program we use for this website is called WordPress. It is a nifty little program that is highly configurable and customizable. People have come up with a number of different themes (the way it looks) and plugins (the stuff it does) for you to choose from. I also use this program on my wife’s blog. Well, the plugin that we use to make it so that you can play the podcast on the site has an update. On my wife’s blog, we have the updated version (version 7.9). Here we are using 7.7. So I decide I’ll go ahead and update this one since the new version is a bit easier to use from the back end. Well, an hour later I finally un-install the damn thing and reinstall the 7.7 version. It seems like this theme just doesn’t play nice with a lot of plugins. Once I upgraded, all the podcasts disappeared from the site. Not cool. At first I thought I had to repost them or move them or that I had upgraded wrong so I fiddled with it for about an hour before I decided to just reinstall the older version.

Read more…

No, I’m not having a bad Viagra day… I’ve spent the last few hours signing up the podcast for every directory I can find. Why does it have to be so hard to submit your feed? They are a PODCAST DIRECTORY, one would think they’d WANT to list your feed. iTunes was a breeze but I came across a number that have malfunctioning submit buttons, some that want you to insert graphics into your site (no, not doing that), and some that plain don’t have a submit button at all! What’s up with that? How do you get listed over there? Smoke signals? What a bunch of tools. And don’t get me started on HTML and WordPress and the language that only programmers seem to understand. I’m over it. I may be a geek but at least I still speak English. And when someone wants to log in and can’t, I IMMEDIATELY get a register button working (like, within 5 minutes of notification). These sites just don’t seem to care that they don’t work. In the back of my mind I have this vision of a round table, a bunch of nerds, and a single Mac that controls all of this. Together, with their God, Steve Jobs, they are single handedly making everything but iTunes hard to use so that Mac can continue it’s domination of 90% of the mp3 player market and 2% of the computer market. Snarky little punks. Not that I mind them sticking it to the Gate-a-saurous Rex but I’m an innocent bystander here! All I want to do is list my podcast so Kurt can download it! Is that so wrong?!?

OK, Dina’s real pic is up on her bio page (realize she has two cause she special). She says she’s got a better one on the way but I wouldn’t hold my breath. It took me weeks to get her to give me this one.

Apparently, there was no way to sign into the site so that people could comment on the blogs (and I’m just finding this out 🙁 ). I’ve fixed that as well (look on the right for the site admin button).

We’ve gotten a couple more phone calls. Derek, if you’re out there, this is what I heard, “Given the loudness wars (garble) (garble) (garble) (garble) (garble) vinyl a way to avoid it.” You’re going to have to call in again if you want an answer. Not sure what happened there.

-Here’s a little something that I wrote for OPRA that didn’t feel right for Audioholics. Here it makes much more sense 🙂

The universe is a strange and wonderful place. It is full of mysteries and conundrums. In the dark corners of the Internet, people worry, wonder, and pontificate on its majesty, mightiness, and… um… mysticalness? Anyhow, the universe is cool and all, but it tends to make people a little nutty. Not from living in it so much as in trying to lock down exactly how it started. Or became. Or winked into existence as a popped pimple on the back of a giant banana slug. Well, we here at The OPRA Coalition have identified and explored the different viewpoints so that we can present this monumental issue in a coherent, concise, and, um, clear manner. Oh, and we’ll relate all this to audio in some way. We promise.

Big Bang and Evolutionalism

You can’t enter a preschool these days without hearing the theory of the Big Bang. For those of you that have been living under a rock or in a monastery all your life, the theory of the Big Bang is that the universe started with an explosion. And not just any ole explosion, but a massive one. The real issue is two-fold – what exactly caused the explosion and what went on before. Well, before we get into that, a bit of background is needed. Read more…