What The?

Tonight on my Xuqa (which is by the way, completely and utterly useless to me in every way) I got this message:

hey wassup. how are ya? just wanted to stop by n say hi :] new here and gettin too much unwanted attention from specific guys. but u seem cool so i wanted toget to know ya. im actually on my cam too so if u wanna chat, msg me on there because this site runs too slow for me and keeps giving me errors :[ http://(rest of the link deleted to protect the possibly innocent…)

ttyl

The link sent me to a webcam site that I have to say had some interesting pictures on it, almost revealing, and kind of um… almost pornographic. (Hence the link not being posted, or the name of the person who sent it, or her college.)

However, what I thought was amusing was that this person actually has friends on Xuqa, and those friends were not related to the pornography industry whatsoever. I could be wrong and this could not be a pornographic site that I was linked to, and this could be a real person actually hitting on me randomly over the internet. However, knowing what I know about this industry, it looks like they have entered a new marketing arena: college social websites. And you know what that means? New forms of spam. And not the canned ham spam, but the bad evil internet version that isn’t the sticky kid in elementary school. More like the ugly janitor in high school who was missing a leg from the war.

Now honestly, I know I could be wrong. But at the same time, and don’t get me wrong here, I’m probably right. And being right about things like this, I don’t believe that this girl actually wants to talk to me, this girl wants me to pay to watch her get naked on her webcam for five dollars a month.

And that’s all I’m going to say on this topic. Watch out Xuqa, Facebook and others. Here comes porno!

The Duct Tape Messenger Bag How-to

The Duct Tape Messenger Bag Hot To is a part of my regular site, Kevin Myrick Dot Com (which for some reason went down. This of course was not due to traffic coming from the Make Magazine Blog that posted the How-to on their site.)

Since I can’t really remember what I wrote at this particular moment, and made the mistake of not saving the text to somewhere useful, I’m gonna wing it and see what I can come up with. Everyone cool with this? Good.

To make the bag, you’re going to need two large pieces of duct tape fabric (note: if you don’t know how to make duct tape fabric, here’s a good link from the Duck Tape Club on how to make fabric. I would not suggest people try this project if they’ve never tried to make duct tape fabric before right here and now.)

The two pieces of the bag, front and back, should be at least two inches bigger on each side than either a 12″ laptop or your largest 3-ring binder. (For students or professionals who still use 3-ring binders.) The back piece should be double the height than the front piece in order to make a flap to cover the front.

Now that you have to large pieces of fabric, I’d suggest making a smaller shorter piece of fabric for a pocket on the front, and attach it to the front face down, keeping in mind that what is face up will be the inner portion of the bag.

Next thing you’ll need to do is make a piece of fabric for the bottom that is the length of the width of the main pieces, and at least three strips wide (you’ll want a good, flat bottom. I’ll get to that in a minute. This piece needs to be attached to the main pieces on both the bottom and the top using at least two pieces of duct tape on each. This will make the bottom a little more stable.

Now, make side pieces of fabric in much the same fashion. Attach them in the same way you did with the bottom piece, on both the top and the bottom of the center bottom piece.

Now fold up the the main pieces and the side. Make sure the flap doesn’t get in the way. You’re going to tape the sides to the main pieces on both the inside and outside of the main pieces. The bag should be able to stand on its own now.

Now that you have the bag in a whole form, it’s time to add a strap and some pockets. The strap should be at least the width of a single piece of duct tape, but you can go wider if you choose. Wider in that, you can do what I did and make your strap at least three strips wide. Why did I do this? I like sturdiness. And comfort. The weight on my shoulder from the bag is lessened when the strap is wider for some reason… maybe physics or something I don’t understand. Anyhow, make the strap out of at least 36″ strips of duct tape, and attach them to each side from the bottom and sides. You’ll want to tape on the sides to keep the straps from moving around a lot, and attach it on the bottom so the strap won’t break as easily. You’ll need to at least tape the bottom edges of the strap to the bottom in two places and on the sides in two places.

Now we’ll add a pocket to the side over one of the straps. Make a small piece of fabric, attach it to the side in three places, and test out and see what you can fit into it.

And finally, the coup de gras, the bottom umbrella pocket. This is a feature I’ve seen missing in messenger bags for a long time. with the size of my messenger bag, you can fit a small personal umbrella (with the handle sticking out for easy access) in a long pocket on the bottom. Make a piece of fabric the same size as your bottom piece and add that sucker on, and you’re good to go! Umbrella storage that won’t ruin things inside of your messenger bag when it’s raining!

 

And that should be it. With the creation of the fabric, it should take at least 1 1/2 rolls of duct tape to create the bag (not including colored duct tape) and about 6 total hours of time to build. Things I’ll be adding in the future are a place for a bottle (of coke or water…), a place for carabiners to attach whatever I might be hauling around, and pockets on the front flap that can be clasped easily.

Hope you all enjoy!

Serenity Screening

Hey all.

Check out this site for getting into a Serenity screening!

D&D Fans, eat your hearts out…

This Calendar is the perfect example of why D&D geeks are not allowed to make advancements in the world. If I role this, and it lands on September, I guess I would have to role the 30-sided die to decide how many hit points you take when my Palladin attacks your Wizard…

Review of WordPress.com

So, here I am, a WordPress user on a webserver with my very own WordPress.com account. What am I to do with this? Why, I know! I’ll give an invite to my girlfriend, and then do a write-up on WordPress.com! That sounds like an excellent idea, doesn’t it?

You don’t think so? Too bad. I’m about to give you the skinny on WordPress.com so that you indeed, can see what’s what on the site, and for those of you who aren’t really experienced with this whole “blogging thing” can get how easy it is to use. So first, let’s look at how you get an invite…

See this picture? This is the “gatekeeper” of WordPress.com. Unless you’re in the know, and have a friend who has a friend who already has a WordPress.com account with an invite, there’s only two ways you’re getting one. The first way is by entering in your e-mail address and waiting. But I waited like, a month. Not really a good way to get an invite in my opinion.

So the other way you can get one is eBay. However, I’ve heard rumors of those going for 20 bucks or more (can’t confirm…) but you should still go on eBay and see if you can get one for under five bucks. It’s worth it folks, and this is why….

First things first. This isn’t hard. Some of the things I write about in this post will probably not be quite understood by the common man, so it might be a good idea to ignore it. Secondly, DON’T ASK ME FOR AN INVITE! I already gave it away. If there was a way to change the username on the account for WordPress.com, I’d give it to my mom or dad and let them play with it. It’s not that I’m not charitable, it’s just that I help the ones around me first. Then I help the ones who aren’t.

First things first, I’ve said this before and I’ll say this again. Matt Mullenweg, you’re a programming god. I bow down to your goodness. You’ve given me so much for so little. Thank you, thank you very very much. BUT, I’ve got a small bit of complaints against WordPress.com versus regular WordPress, or things that are lacking in regular wordpress…

WordPress.com versus WordPress 1.5 dashboards, side by side.

One, let’s look at the Dashboard. The dashboard for WordPress.com versus the dashboard for regular WordPress is quite different. WordPress.com offers a plethora of links to other WordPress.com blogs inside of the WordPress.com system. It also offers the most recent updates on WordPress.com. This is an excellent addition to the system that, if I had anything to say about it, would be added to the regular WordPress install. But of course, I can’t code to save my life anymore, so I don’t see that happening. But keep this in mind Ryan Boren and Matt Mullenweg, it could be useful to people. Things I don’t initially like about the current WordPress dashboard is that it seems to be that the incoming links aren’t regularly updated. Since I haven’t done an official post on WordPress.com, then I can’t say for sure if it works. But I’m assuming that this feature works for WordPress.com as it does in regular WordPress.

Now, onto writing. Writing, as with any blog, is essential. WordPress.com makes it so simple, that even an 80-year-old woman whom has only ever used Windows 95 can write a post. Everything can be “cliked.” As Rob from Podcast 411 would say, “a flashing 12 could do this.” For more information on what a flashing 12 is, listen to his first couple of podcasts.

As I was saying, everything can be easily clicked on to insert it. This is also true for regular WordPress, but not to the extent that it is in the WordPress.com 1.6 system. If this is any indication of what the new 1.6 system is going to include, then here is a laundry list of demands I must make.

WordPress’s writing functions, side by side

1) Make it easier for me to insert my photos into a post. This has to be the first and foremost important thing included in the 1.6 release of WordPress. I don’t mind adding img and link tags to each post, but this is ridiculous. I just want to easily be able to enter a picture into my post and go, and possibly have it wrap around text. A lot of the contraints of WordPress has to do with this specific problem, but I think if 1.6 is going to be anything like WordPress.com, this should be solved quickly and quietly.

2) Layout is a problem, specifically with the way that WordPress just makes entries lined up and time-based. I wish for a layout design (but will probably never receive my wish) that could be more like a newspaper, with pictures and text together and everything changing depending on category. While the timeline method works for organization, it would be nicer if it had more flexibility. However, considering that WordPress is blogging software and nothing more, nothing less, I don’t blame the designers for layout issues.

And finally…

3) WordPress.com gets the option to see what the themes look like before you make them your own theme. Why don’t I in WordPress?

This is another criticism of WordPress.com that I have. In WordPress, you can edit your themes to what you want them to be, and install new themes via FTP or some form of uploading. In WordPress.com, you’re limited to 8 themes. They are default (the default theme for a WordPress install, whether it be WordPress or WordPress.com, based on “Kubrick”) WordPress Classic, Almost Spring, Ocadia, Pool, Blix, Connections, and Green Marinee. While it is intelligent to limit the amount of themes a user can control, it would be nice to be able to edit them so that you can make a WordPress.com site, well, yours. WordPress has the power inside of it to edit (even though there are certain server settings you have to make), so what’s up with this?

The WordPress.com theme selection page versus the WordPress theme selection page

Maybe as the system grows, so will the amount of themes available to the user and the power to edit them. However, until this crucial element is added, this will be one of the limitations of WordPress.com. I’ll give them credit since it is still in Beta, but so is a lot of other things, like Google Maps. And we’ve all seen what can be done with it. This is a feature that should be added, and soon. Matt and Ryan, if you’re reading, do this soon.

Options are pretty straight forward. The WordPress.com Profile page and Options pages are clean and easy to figure out. One thing I especially like is the way that the profile page for your singular user account on WordPress.com is the layout. Everything is side by side instead of the WordPress’s straight down. Easier to edit and read, rather than having to deal with tabing down and not remembering what you put in. The little aesthetic qualities of WordPress.com count for something, and this will hopefully be another feature in WordPress’s final version of 1.6 that will be installed.

The options pages for WordPress.com and WordPress, side by side

The Profile Pages for WordPress.com and WordPress, side by side.

One other feature that WordPress.com has that WordPress doesn’t is uploading. You have 15mb of space to work with (although on my account, as you can clearly see in the blown up photo, I have 25mb) that you can upload pictures with. Now, this is probably my biggest gripe with every single piece of software written for either blogging or to be a portal system – photos have always been ignored. Something I would like to see done is to incorporate a powerful photo sharing system, like Flickr or Gallery to be natively incorporated into WordPress. WordPress.com sort of does this with the Upload function, but doesn’t provide a way of looking at what you have uploaded to the system. This is another critical fix that should be done ASAP. Providing the image tag (see the third picture, the one on the right) is helpful, but you should be able to see the picture you want to post. But, they do provide automatic thumbnail creation for your posts, so that is a big plus. That, my friends, definitely comes in handy compared to the way I currently thumbnail, which is through my server management software. Also, being able to select your picture while posting could also, I dunno, be helpful.

The Uploading Process in WordPress.com. A feature that is noticeably absent from WordPress.

The current way of placing an image in a post.

I can say one thing for certain: WordPress.com is definitely not your Google’s Blogger. In fact, it’s better. A hell of a lot better. Things are a lot easier to do in WordPress than Blogger is. And for WordPress.com, this is definitely a step in the right direction. If WordPress.com can heed my advice and incorporate some of the things that I suggested into the system, it will be even better and more powerful than Blogger could EVER be. In fact, I could go so far as to say that it could indeed be bought up by some company like Google one day, and Matt and all the programmers of WordPress could get rich. And wouldn’t that just be a justification of a job well done? I think so. As long as the system behind WordPress stays free, that is. Then I could accept an outcome like that.

Overall, I give WordPress currently a 3 and a half out of 5. That is, for right now. I’d suggest sticking around my site and seeing what else I have to say about it at a later date. In the meantime, use the Feeback button on your WordPress.com blog as much as you can. It can only help more and more.