Posted April 30th, 2008, in: Computer Problems and Fixes
Depending on how a server is set up, your WordPress installation might not allow you to upload files larger than say, 20 MB, or at least that’s how it was for me.
Upload form may give you an error saying “This file is too big. Your php.ini upload_max_filesize is 20M.” (or some other number)…
This is actually not really a problem with WordPress as much as it is a problem with your server’s php installation settings. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to fix. If you see a file in your root directory called php.ini you can probably take care of this problem by following these intructions
However, if you are using 1and1 web hosting, like one of my recent clients, you wont see a php.ini file hangin around in your root directory. 1and1 doesn’t give you access to this file. Don’t cry. You can change the php.ini file, that you don’t have access to, by uploading a new one containing only the parameters you want to change, to every directory where you want the php rules to be changed, this means the root “/” the website’s folder if there is one “/website/” the sub-folder for wordpress if there is one “/blog/” and the directory called “/wp-admin/”
The file only needs to have these lines in it
upload_max_filesize = 100M
post_max_size = 30M
“M” stands for Megabyte, if that’s not completely obvious. And you can put any value you want here. I went with 100MB for uploads.
I’m leaning toward being cautious here. Probably you can just put one of these files into /wp-admin/ but I’m not sure. Also, you may be able to delete them once you put them in place and refresh the wordpress dashboard. I’m not sure about that either.
I eventually found this info after much googling here on 1and1’s page about this. Also included is how to do this using .htaccess which is what you need to do if have a Managed Server running PHP as an Apache Module.
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Posted April 30th, 2008, in: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Videos
Someone should let this kid try out drag racing, not punish him for his ingenuity. It’s our job to empower children, not restrict them. I’m proud of this little G for being so self-empowered. With guidance, and people around him who are wise, he’ll go far in life.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKN64o-vHyU]
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Posted April 30th, 2008, in: Art Etc| Marketing/Advertising In The Cloud
The final 5 episodes, 9-13 have begun rolling out. This is being timed with the retail release of the film at Borders via Genius and IFC. The MySpace Home Page is a major traffic-driver! MySpace has been a really big help with promoting the film since the beginning of the podcast series. If you want to see the spot in action go to myspace.com, and hit refresh til it comes up in the rotation.
I think this is like the 4th time MySpace has featured Four Eyed Monsters in one way or another. I put the value of this spot at between $50,000 and $100,000, based on what I’ve heard.
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Posted April 26th, 2008, in: Computer Problems and Fixes
Last night, I noticed that at the bottom of my posts, the links that normally link to the categories of my blog that i posted the post to, had changed into links to tag-searches in the wordpress community blog search pages. So rather than providing additional navigation throughout my site, the links are taking the reader away from my blog.
I wouldn’t mind this if it was parallel, that is if it said “posted in Category, Category2, Category3.” and then went on “Tagged with Category, Category2, Category3″
But no.
To me, the category links that go with each post are one of the most intuitive navigation features that blogs commonly have. They act like “See more by this author in this category” links. In fact, I think that category links in the sidebar of a blog are less user-friendly than the ones that accompany each post because of the scroll-free way in which you interact with them. You use category navigation largely to evaluate a site or to scan to find a specific kind of content. Who wants to be scrolling back UP and scanning side-columns to find the category navigation? Not me. Scan, click, scan, clack. That’s what we do. And we scan downward, not back up.
Recently, WordPress seems to have decided that they want users to start using the Tag feature. They’ve even moved the Category form way down below the fold of the WYSIWYG, below the Tag form.
I have never used Tags because I think they are pointless for the author to add. Tags are for folksonomies like delicious, not for bloggers to use to increase their own meta-clutter. We have meta keywords in html for that. And a good blogger will use categories in reasonable ways which will result in user-friendly navigation as well as SEO.
I thought maybe if I used the “Convert Categories to Tags” feature, once I had some tags in the database, maybe the “filed in” links would default back to the way they are supposed to… Maybe this was a bug I’m experiencing because I have never added a tag to my blog.
Alas, all my categories are now deleted. I have around 200 posts on this blog.
I’m realizing now that we’re being manipulated into driving traffic to WordPress.com Tag-Searches. Sickening. I don’t mind linking back to the community blog-pile, but shit, don’t take away my readers’ ease of use to do it! Jeez.
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Posted April 26th, 2008, in: Computer Problems and Fixes
Categories are not the same as tags, not in the WordPress.com infrastructure anyway.
This is so unfair. It feels like WP.com is selling me out to eyeball-count-based ideas of monetizing. This is not the culture of WordPress that I have based my trust and support on.
My blog is feeling suicidal right now. It’s not OK to exploit your users in order for WP’s pseudo-search-engine to get more traffic.
Maybe you guys don’t work on the weekend. Please just fix this right now, real quick.
God Damn, I’m so angry. Please reverse this update. It’s not cool.
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Posted April 26th, 2008, in: Computer Problems and Fixes
I love the WP Community stuff, but shit. This is horrible. I don’t want people navigating my blog to be navigating everyone who uses wordpress’ blog at the same time.
I WILL ABANDON WORDPRESS.COM OVER THIS.
THIS IS NOT OK.
there’s no point in having a domain (or sub-domain) if readers are just going to end up in the larger community mix. May as well just serve permalinks for posts and not even have a serial publishing platform that is author-specific aka blogging platform.
huge mistake. Please fix it immediately.
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Posted April 26th, 2008, in: Art Etc| Drawings| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Paintings| Projects| Visual Art
This is a photo I took as a resource material. I was really more focused on aged plastic lawn chairs, with their patina of plastic degradation mixed with dust, dirt, mold etc… The aging of these things adds a layer of human-skin-like-ness… Real people have blemishes and unevenness in their skin. These plastic Lawn Chairs have all the qualities of manufactured ideals of organic beauty, and all the symptoms of how manufacturing makes something less organic. They have plucked eyebrows. They have face-lifts. And they are sexy but slightly repulsive and all too familiar.
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Posted April 26th, 2008, in: Art Etc| Drawings| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Paintings| Projects| Visual Art
Another of the many Lawnchair Paintings I did over the course of a couple years. This one was destroyed in the fire, and I was glad to see it go in a way at the time. At a distance, now I see that there are some cool things about it. Oh well. It’s gone. Such is life.
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Posted April 25th, 2008, in: Four Eyed Monsters| New Media| Projects| Technology| Web 2.0
UPDATE, 2008-04-24: The times it aired were, according to my email transcripts with friends and family Etc:
- 2008-04-25 @ 6:00 pm PST
- 2008-04-26 @ 1:30 am PST
- 2008-05-10 @ 11:00 am PST
Four Eyed Monsters, the feature film, will have its national cable TV debut tonight at 9pm Eastern time on IFC. The film has received tons of awards and critical acclaim since it first hit the film festival circuit. It was even nominated for two Independent Spirit awards, Best Cinematography and Best Feature made for under a half million dollars (or something like that).
The film has made a big splash in the realms of Social Media Marketing and Digital Distribution. So this is news on a few different levels. It was the first feature film to screen in Second Life; the first full-length film shown on YouTube; probably the first MiniDV film to get a “best cinematography” nomination from a major film award organization (pretty sure about that one); one of the first films to be advertised via additional content via podcasting (probably the first film to video podcast at all); and all this from a film initially thought to be un-marketable by Hollywood distributors. This film has clawed it’s way up the back of our mainstream culture using totally innovative methods and now, after proving itself online, having been watched around a million times on YouTube, Four Eyed Monsters has been acquired by IFC. Smart pick, IFC!
Tune in! (isn’t that what they used to say back in the TV days?)
For the sake of being fair, full disclosure and all that, I worked on the film and composed the score. It’s still good though, I promise.
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