Rubenerd

Vinícius Lira over in this comments thread has proposed a ridiculously elegant solution to using a default WordPress installation to host multiple blogs on different databases. If it works, it's genius.

1. Create a subdomain that points to your WordPress installation, such as http://newblog.site.com/

2. Create a new database, such as newblog

3. Edit the wp-config.php file and replace:

   define('DB_NAME', 'wordpress');

   with:

   if($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] == "site.com" or
   $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] == "www.site.com") {
   	define('DB_NAME', "mysitedatabase");
   }
   elseif ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] == "newblog.site.com") {
   	define('DB_NAME', "newblog");
   }
   

Haven't tested it myself yet, but it seems too simple. It shouldn't work. If it does, it'd be schweet.

I really need to spin these anime posts off into a separate blog again.

There's some debate that not only Sorami Kanata and Hirasawa Yui are the same character but they're comparable in awesomeness.

I'm going to get into trouble from the increasingly vocal anti-moe taskforce for saying this, but while I enjoyed the few So-Ra-No-Wo-To episodes I saw and while I do think the trumpet is an awesome instrument (especially if used in jazz), Yui is still the Queen. I'm right… right?

Ruben asks: Cynical responses aside, why didn’t the American government pay the mortgages of people so they could keep their homes with that $700 billion? Then the banks would have got their money too. It would have helped PEOPLE. I did economics classes for years, but I still don’t get this.

Sparx replies: In a word, corruption.

One of the world's best dressed and most friendly scientists, Dr Karl answered a question about muscle exhaustion.

Why do arm muscles get tired? @maxiewawa Mmm. Ca++ exhaustion, glucose exhaustion, lactic acid overload, neurotransmitter exhaustion, etc.

I can relate, whenever I write C++ code I get severe muscle exhaustion in my fingers and brain ;-).

By contrast, Java shifts some of that mental exhaustion from the brain to the fingers WithItsExcessiveCamelCaseMethods. I think wrapper methods saved me from serious finger ligament damage and carpel tunnel syndrome.

This post that I constructed entirely out of an intentionally misread quote was brought to you by a Grilled Cheese Sandwich.

For those of you who didn't read my tweets from earlier this year, on new year's day I vowed to not watch television for an entire year. It turns out to have been far simpler than I thought it would be :).

Of course, notice my phrasing, I didn't say "television shows" I said "television". The idea of waiting around for someone else's schedule to watch programming has seemed weird and foreign to me for many years, here I'm just taking it a step further. My iPhone and laptops are my televisions now. No TV tuner though, all of it is from internet sources.

I’m a bit less angry now

The first thing I noticed was I'm less angry in the evenings. I have an insatiable appetite for news, it's why I unsubscribed to a bunch of wire services on Google Reader and later retired it for Twitter. I hate being kept out of the loop. If someone took away my internet access today, news would absolutely be the number 1 thing I would miss.

As I'm sure is the case in many places, the news on commercial television in Australia is terrible. Even if there was a major humanitarian disaster somewhere or a new scientific discovery, almost without question the first 10 minutes are about mundane local affairs, followed by a token amount for business, then the rest is entirely dedicated to painfully detailed sport analysis. I admit I find the whole idea of most sports to be terribly dull, pointless and uninteresting, but in Adelaide they have to analyse AFL, a primitive contact sport nobody else in the world even plays.

Then don't get me started on the tabloid news programmes. A Current Affair and Today Tonight represent the absolute dregs of media reporting in Australia, but often they would have at least one story I'd be marginally interested in so I'd find myself watching them. ACA and TT are like poisons, there's no safe dosage.

I cut these shows entirely out of my diet, and I'm a happier person.

Not limited to time and place

Less than five years ago if you didn't watch television you were pretty limited online, but thesedays with podcasting and legal media downloads (cough) I'm spoilt for choice. Not only that, but I can choose where and when I watch media, for example I've made it a habit of watching Media Watch on Tuesday mornings on the train. It's a ton of fun :).

At some point I'll write up all the video shows I download. It's as if I have my own personal television network!

I get my insatiable appetite for trivia from my dear granddad. From the time I was a kid he would regale me with a particular fact, then triumphantly exclaim "so there's another one to add to your vast store of useless information!"

The Hyundai logo, a slanted, stylized ‘H’, symbolizes the company shaking hands with its customer

I never saw that, but I can kinda see it now. Clever logos are cool.

Well that didn't take long! My comment on Om Malik's iPad review:

I love the first photo of you with the iPad Om, it looks like you’re posing for a book cover. “Om Malik: How I Built a Blog Empire and Had Fun Doing It” :)

I've had some time to think about my criticisms of Wikipedia and the rebuttals people have posted, so I've modified my user page to reframe my "worrying out loud" into governance proposals.

While he finds the philosophy and mission of Wikipedia noble, he firmly believes administrators who repeatedly have their short-sighted article deletion nominations rejected should have their privileges temporarily or permanently revoked depending on the number of offences. He also thinks indiscriminate template boilerplate should always have an accompanying explanation specific to the article or media in question; it’s the polite thing to do.

Both these proposals would help to discourage administrative abuse.

I use Wikipedia a lot but rarely edit it, and part of the reason has been because of heavy handed administrators. I understand there have been plenty of abuses from malicious or self serving editors, but as I've said here before the fact that decent, honest people like Jim Kloss have felt their large contributing days are over is a loss not to him, but to all of us.

As with terrorism and government policy, the fact some people abuse the system should not be used as an excuse to unfairly restrict honest people or treat them with less respect. Even if the motive of some administrators isn't to be condescending or rude when they slap indiscriminate introductory boilerplate onto a contributors talk page, it doesn't negate the result.

Wow, a seriously worded post on Rubenerd.com, who'd have thunk it.

It’s spelled "ketchup," as stated in its first description from 1711. "Catsup" is slang used by the perverts that put it on eggs. ~@FakeAPStylebook

I thought it was spelled "tomato sauce" ;).

I promise this will be my last iPad post, at least for a long time. In fact with this problem, it might not even be a self-imposed restriction :P.

From reading the reviews flooding in so far, the response has been almost universally positive. I think dante@sisna.com on the MacRumours forums put it the most eloquently:

You have to leave the desk with one — sit on the sofa with it — to really grasp how it will begin to change lifestyles.

So much more enjoyable than a laptop/netbook.

It just changes the whole experience. I am hooked.

Going to have a hard time producing client content today — I want to CONSUME it.

The YouTube iPad interface is beautiful

I'll reserve my own judgement until I use one for myself, but if this is true it shows once for all technical specifications have little to no bearing on usability after all. Waah, the iPad doesn't have feature X and a netbook does! Yes, and what's your point?

Unfortunately my own worst fear about it has been confirmed. From the first post in the aformentioned MacRumors forum thread:

The screen is bright and crisp with wide viewing angles. Despite the oleophobic coating, it collects and shows fingerprints more than expected.

Well bother

Not only do I inherit my dad's inability to devise and deliver good jokes, I also suffer from constantly sweaty hands, the medical term is palmer hyperhidrosis. It's perhaps my biggest handicap as a software developer and blogger, if I don't have a keyboard cover and replace it every couple of months I destroy computer hardware. It also means I don't shake people's hands and I can't walk along holding hands with a girl, which makes me even more socially awkward and shy than I would otherwise be. Anyway, you get the idea :(.

Surprisingly, having a touch screen phone has been a godsend because a flat surface is much easier to wipe clean than a tiny, complicated keyboard, but given I'd be reading books on an iPad I worry having my greasy pawprints over the screen would get really irritating. A small iPhone screen (or a Nexus One screen, or a Palm Pre screen…) is easy to wipe clean, but would it scale to something as big as an iPad?

I suppose for now I'll have to keep using smaller sub-notebooks with keyboard covers, until Apple develops a super high tech self cleaning screen that's even better than what they currently have.

There's a joke about absorbency and the product's name, but that's below the tone and standards of this blog. Heh, iPad.