a record of thoughts

Yesterday, WordPress released version 2.7. It’s a point upgrade which means there are significant changes that could affect my plugins and themes. I’m not that impulsive as to upgrading software version, so I ran an upgrade on my test site. It’s close to identical to this “production” site of course so that I can properly troubleshoot if any. I was satisfied with the test, so I decided late last night to upgrade. This is my first post…

The new admin panel looks more like MovableType. Hmmmm. This release is AJAX overload :)

I borrowed my father’s notebook computer so that I can watch high quality video while I’m lying down on my bed. It’s running on Vista that I stripped off of every silly things Microsoft added. Anyway, I installed an MSNM and during the installation I was asked if I wanted to install the Writer which can be used to jot down offline entries for a blog. I wanted to try, so I installed the software. Here I am on my first entry using Windows Live Writer.

For a Windows user, it’s a great piece of software. Especially for me; I sometimes write my entries while on the ferry. I don’t have Windows in my Eee PC so I had to install an offline instance of WordPress in it. With Windows Live Writer, it’s pretty straightforward. No web server or database engine to run, just let MS do the work for you. I must admit, it may be one of a few software that I like from MS.

I’m already praising the software even before saving and publishing this entry. So here we go…

I was looking around WordPress for an idea for today and stumbled upon a bloggers iPersonic entry and thought I’d give it a try. I have the results below. Not perfect, but some are sound. Psychological theories are still a long way to go. I really believe that each individual is a diffusion of each other. They are the same, yet different. It’s like Philosophy. I’ve spent a few years searching for my niche in Philosophy, but I can’t completely pinpoint my loyalty.

Independent Thinkers are analytical and witty persons. They are normally self-confident and do not let themselves get worked up by conflicts and criticism. They are very much aware of their own strengths and have no doubts about their abilities. People of this personality type are often very successful in their career as they have both competence and purposefulness. Independent Thinkers are excellent strategists; logic, systematics and theoretical considerations are their world. They are eager for knowledge and always endeavor to expand and perfect their knowledge in any area which is interesting for them. Abstract thinking comes naturally to them; scientists and computer specialists are often of this type. (more…)

I’ve been following the WordPress 2.6 pre-release builds and when I woke this morning, the admin panel was urging me to upgrade. I didn’t have time to do it this morning, but I checked out the video that the people from Automattic made. I didn’t notice any changes that could affect the site, so I upgraded my two sites a few minutes ago. I find that there are outstanding upgrades in the admin panel especially the plugins section. It makes sense to separate the active and inactive plugins because sometimes I’m confused if I’m upgrading (I also like a flag telling me I have a number of plugin updates) an active plugin. Selective activation/deactivation is also an awesome addition. There is revision trail, so that’s exciting. WordPress is becoming a more sophisticated word processing software it seems.

Anyway, for those who are afraid to upgrade, I’m telling you it’s safe. You gotta love the word count also. Another awesome feature.

I feel cocky tonight, so I’ll present you with deceiving stats for this web site. I intentionally cropped the graphs to have 400px width so that they won’t mess up the layout of the web site. Giving, of course, the sample containing the highest peak.

If you see a graph, do not conclude immediately. You need more information in order to understand the situation — the behavior of the sample. Statistics is widely used now to give us false information. Every morning you will hear these information in the news. Researchers taking down stats and most of us make facts out of these samples. That’s why I hate the medical field so very much because of its dependence to stats. (more…)

Okay I have been wondering about these in the past few weeks (or months maybe):

1. How come new bloggers still use Blogspot.com over WordPress.com?
2. Why is there a need to create multiple blogsites? (most of the time are not updated) (more…)

I’m not a UNIX guru, so I can’t really memorize all commands. When upgrading my WordPress version, I only run four lines of commands, but I can’t remember the parameters. Today, I was in the mood to write a simple bash shell script so that next time all I have to do to upgrade my site are: backup, run the script, relax… The script does not backup data and design files. If you are to use the code, make sure to backup before running the script. Check out WordPress for backup solutions.
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