WordPress.org came out with a new security release version 2.3.3
Apparently, the previous version allowed a registered user to exploit a security hole and edit anything in the blog.
Amazing.
If you’re using the WordPress 2.3.x series, you can download the complete version or just the security fix here.
Filed under: Blogging
I migrated Loving Jacqui to new blogging software, WordPress, so I can use the comments again.
Previously, I used FTP (file transfer protocol — a method of publishing your web pages to the server) “Classic” Blogger to publish web pages to a server and blogKomm, a .php script to keep comments beneath my posts on my own pages.
I liked it for design reasons since Blogger used popups for comments, which are less user friendly and didn’t suit the look and feel of my blog.
However, look and feel be damned I say! I kept on getting slammed with comment spam. Also, it stored all the comments in one text file meaning the entire file had to be scanned every time someone opened a web page. As the file grew longer, it would naturally degrade speed and performance and this could only get worse.
WordPress on the other hand uses a combination of core files, theme files (determining the look of a site, the position of page elements, etc.), and a database to pull different parts of a page together including posts and comments “on the fly”.
This is actually slower than using normal web pages on a server, but has the advantage that it can handle hundreds or thousands of comments much easier. Oh, and it’s well maintained software with better anti-spam solutions. And it’s a lot more fun to use for publishing than Blogger’s is.
Classic Blogger, believe it or not, rebuilt most of the website every time you published one post. So it was fast in the beginning, but now with over 100 posts, took longer each time I used it. So you’d click the “Publish Now” button and wait. And wait.
Then it would tell you it was taking a long time (as if you didn’t already know). Then ask if you wanted to continue. Why yes, you do. So you’d click a button telling it to do what you told it to do five minutes ago. Often this would happen again.
Now it’s quicker. Using the new software, for all intents and purposes since you’re only publishing the one post and updating a few entries in the database, the lag time is about the same as when you click the send button of an email. The amount of data transmitted is similar.
For web page download speed from your perspective, WordPress can use “gzip” compression to reduce their size and serve them to you quicker, provided your browser supports it. WordPress also can create “cache” files (static files generated automatically the first time a user visits a page, so when subsequent users visit, they see the cache file and the database doesn’t need to be queried as often) to handle higher volume if necessary, something which has not been a problem!
Greek blogger Nick of ngtech.gr has also devised an interesting change to WordPress’s cache module so it compresses the cache file and stores it as such, then it’s served as needed. Other solutions involving cache don’t allow for any compression at all or, if they do allow compression, force your server to do the work of compressing the cache file each time a user’s web browser requests it.
This puts a drain on server resources especially in a shared hosting environment — where several websites share one HTTP (static page) server and a separate MySQL (database) server.
Unfortunately, I can’t use WordPress’s cache function while keeping the options to switch themes between “Original Blue” and Ghastly Pink”. Some people claim the wp-cache plugin can be modified to overlook the stylesheet cookie and still function. However, I have never seen a solution which actually works. If you have one, please advise!
In addition to migrating over posts (using a script) and comments (by hand!), I also rewrote the XHTML and CSS for my theme so it could validate as proper XHTML. Blogger produced buggy code that never validated. WordPress is capable of producing clean code.
(For example, using the old code, in Internet Explorer 6 on long web pages, the bottom half of the sidebar would be stuck to the bottom and there’d be a huge gap between it and the top half. Using the old code, I hadn’t yet been able to fix it and now I don’t have to.)
I removed the flyout navigation menu above each post, put in a navigation header at the top, added a calendar in the sidebar (viewable only in non-Internet Explorer browsers and Internet Explorer 7 and up) so you can browse for any posts published on specific days, and included feed capabilities in case you want to get Loving Jacqui in your favourite feed reader — I’m told this is becoming a popular way of getting blog and news content.
Oh, and I installed a new photo album because the old one was so difficult to use. I didn’t really like it. Yes this new one was complicated to install; I had to make some special accommodations on my web server to get it to work…
… but now, how do I create a new photo gallery?
Well, I make a file on my computer with a name, put photos in it, and FTP it up to my server. And that’s it. The file becomes a new gallery and any photos are named automatically based on their file names. The software also chooses one of the files as a thumbnail. I can change that later if I wish.
Very sweet. So it’s as easy as backing up files.
Filed under: Blogging, Web Design
Yay, I recoded ChristophDollis.com from HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) 4.01 Transitional to XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language) 1.0 Strict.
Filed under: Blogging, Technology, Web Design
Well, I was told by several business professionals my preferred self-title of “Sales Buckaroo” gave the wrong image, that of a “cowboy”.
Well damn if that wasn’t the idea.
They saw this as a bad thing or something. Hmmmmm. I guess I watched too many westerns as a kid.
One thing I agree is it had a “shoot from the hip” quality. And certainly that was my plan.
Yet that plan wasn’t working worth squat!
Since I spent the last month getting organized and learning how to manage work flow — and only then did my purpose and goals come into clear focus — I’m professionalizing.
Sales Pro it is.
I had to throw out $120 worth of business cards and print some out on my inkjet. Which I hate. (I love my laser.) And I had to drag it out of a box and set it up again. Anyway. The new cards…
(Click the image to visit my new business homepage.)
(Click the image to visit my new business BLOG!)
Now, it’s time to find a client and make them a ton of money.
Filed under: Bear, Blogging, Business, Christoph, GTD, News, Success
Jacqui Bear,
I’ve been too busy to write here lately and you’ve been bugging me about it.
When I get more settled in, I will.
In the meantime, know that every day I think about you and when I make business, work, or financial decisions, you’re on my mind each day.
You’re the first woman for whom this was true to any appreciable degree. You’re kind of like that bit of sand that’s stuck in your sandals after you walk off the beach onto pavement.
Redacted
Filed under: Bear, Blogging
… to Dave and Dot Sutton at Sevenoaks Art for offering to provide a Sevenoaks logo-free can of walking Spam optimized for Loving Jacqui’s background colour. It’s for use on my intro-page to the invite friends form that you can see by navigating to:
» “… & Other Options”
→ “Options”
→ “Email This to Your Mates”
in the menu above.
Dave also created the animated Canadian and Australian flags in my sidebar and his website has many intriguing animations, graphics, and tutorials. If you have a website, I recommend visiting:
P.S. Dave just offered. It’s not done yet. Gee. Hold your horses, Jacqui.
UPDATE: Can of spam delivered. Dave promised and he delivered, for no other reason than it’s his hobby and he’s a decent fellow. Thanks for helping, Sevenoaks!
I will not tell her until then. Because I’m cruel.
Filed under: Blogging
Just finished making Loving Jacqui all Christmassy… we were talking about fellow British Columbian, Dave Shea, the creator of the Loving Jacqui template (before heavy modification).
He’s one of the luminaries behind CSS Zen Garden.
A year ago I had a roommate, Barry, who is a generation older than I, but he was just a very good friend to me.
I had a website I wrote in Microsoft Word. Here it is:
lovingjacqui.net/originalopenletter
(although I’ve since rewritten it in something other than Word!)
This is how I met Jacqui, of course, and writing it was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.
But I couldn’t have cared a less about web design. Heck, I wanted it in old school “typewriter” font because it is the closest thing to handwritten and I wanted it to kind of read like a handwritten letter.
It did kinda bug me that when I opened it in other browsers other than Internet Explorer, it looked awful. But since most women I knew used IE, it worked anyway.
My roommate told me that he designed his websites in Notepad. This kind of floored me.
“Notepad?”
“Yep.”
I had no idea about this at the time, but all a website is is a text file using a simple language, (X)HTML: (extensible) Hypertext Markup Language.
It’s very logical and simple. Write it in a text file, change the text file “extension” from .txt to .html and you’re in business.
This realization floored me, but I was intrigued.
Anyway, when I found myself understanding that Jacqui was attracting my attention in a way other women aren’t, I created this blog for her.
Barry had also introduced me to the CSS Zen Garden as an example of how powerful Cascading Style Sheets are.
Go there and see the design. It’s attractive by itself, but look deeper… on the right hand column you’ll see several other designs by other web graphic artists.
They all use the exact same HTML. Try them out.
They are identical even if they look different. What has changed is that each uses a different CSS file. You can visualize why “Cascading Style Sheet” is the perfect name. Everything just flows from it in this neat cascade that you can control by assigning unique “classes” and “ids” to different (X)HTML page elements. It’s how on Loving Jacqui you can press the button on the top right and switch the webpage from “Original Blue” to “Ghastly Pink” and fortunately back again.
The CSS Zen Garden is known around the web for being a beautiful example that has inspired many including me.
I was also talking with her about how I don’t like “alpha-channel transparency” background images.
“What the —?”
Before on the Internet it used to be that your only option for transparency was you could take an image and save it as a .gif file (as opposed to the equally common .jpg usually used for photographs because it offers small file size and millions of possible colours: .gif only offers 256).
When saved as a .gif, it is possible to make certain pixels (picture dots) 100% transparent, which means you can see whatever is behind them.
This allows you to put an image of a dolphin, for example, on your aqua web page and it looks like it belongs there. Even if it really belongs in the ocean.
Newer, more capable web browsers than Internet Explorer: contenders like Opera and Firefox, the one I use, follow more closely Internet standards laid out by the World Wide Web consortium (WC3).
This makes things easier for web designers because while Internet Explorer is common, you’re always trying to make it do things that it “should” do, but won’t do, not without significant tweaking and, “Why the hell does it do that when I just told it to do the opposite?” that you just don’t have to bother with with these other browsers.
For years these other browsers have supported alpha-channel transparency.
You know how when you look through the water, you can see the water and the person swimming beneath it?
Partial transparency = alpha-channel transparency.
Now that the new release of Internet Explorer, IE7, supports alpha-channel transparency, more web designers are placing a background image on their page and then make the surface you write on partially transparent so that you can see the background image like a watermark. They then fix it in place so that when you scroll down, the picture stays and the text itself moves.
This looks very cool and gives the website a certain “unearthy” feeling that makes the site seem light as a feather. It’s beautiful.
But damnit. I come to a website to read and having a photo with light and dark spots behind a partially transparent page makes it hard to read. I guess I’m not 18 anymore, but as a 34-year old, I shudder to think what it’ll be like to read this when I’m 80-something and Bear is lovingly blowing the dust out of my eyes as we send instant telepathic emails enquiring about our prescription drug plan.
So we’re having this conversation, and I’m telling Bear about how I dislike alpha-channel transparency and I’m reading a comment on another blog and I discover this link:
α-channel transparency done right: A Jacqui Bear style “Pretty in Pink” theme even I can approve of
Filed under: Blogging, Technology, Web Design
I thought I deleted all the photos at lovingjacqui.net/photos… but no, it was a script that I installed for another purpose that just blocked access.
I removed one line of code and, voila: Photos are restored!
Filed under: Blogging, Canada
I was debating and commenting about world politics as I was wont to do and someone, either from the U.S. Democratic National Committee where I placed a tongue-in-cheek comment supporting a petition they had or on any of several other blogs and someone came here to criticize me.
Alas for my biting comeback, he was completely right!
“My opinion is that you need to get off your butt, move to Perth and find this Jacqui that you “love.” Do you not see that sitting on your butt ruminating about made for America TV shows is pretty much the most worthless thing you can be doing?”
— United States Guy
I’ve set the permalink to his comment as my new homepage.
Filed under: Australia, Bear, Blogging, Christoph
That’s right – it has a new look and I can’t stand it.
It’s all pink now, but fortunately, you don’t have to see it that way.
While I was playing around with enhancing accessability by giving an option* to easily change the text size so that Jacqui can read this site when she gets old (and people of diminished eyesite can read it now!), that gave me an idea. If there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s an intriguing idea. Jacqui’s favourite colour is pink. I have no idea why. I like blue.
Now moving on, I thought why not use the same technique to change text size to change colour.
And here we are, voilà.
* You must have JavaScript enabled on your web browser to use these enhanced features.
Filed under: Blogging
This is my first ever, “I’m on lunch at work post.”
I was thinking about eating, but I’m not hungry, so what would the point of that be?
Bear, a private message… your “YOU” is on the way… to anyone else, that will be incomprehensible! I was thinking… that you are the most magnetically warm and hilarious (to laugh at) and funny (to laugh with) “Bear” outside of the crazy tourism bears they dress up in the Canadian Mountie RCMP uniforms at our shops.
Except… you gotta check this out! This so reminds me of you. A Bear was caught being all lazy and sleepy-eyed in a hammock… see Fox News here for the video.
Filed under: Bear, Blogging, News
Jacqui gave me this:
(mini table-top tripod)
I’m thinking back to my childhood, including bicycles, and this is the best gift ever. Thank you, sweetheart.
Now, I’m eagerly waiting its arrival….
In other news, yesterday was filled with minor vexations, yet great and simple joys… Jacqui was hot, beautiful, warm, loving, funny, and silly — everything I love about her.
I heard from an old friend, Nicole, who will also give birth soon and that’s exciting.
My friend, Wendy, from Washington state, USA invited me down to see her and her family this weekend; they even have free tickets to a fair.
I received a letter from my last employer (on a temporary contract) in regards to a job competition telling me I am the #1 candidate on their waiting list.
My sister’s new baby, Angel-Jazdell is healthy, and everyone appears to be happy and doing well.
And yes, ordering computer parts from local stores and expecting them to accurately describe their stock with the aid of the clearest questions imaginable (”I need one that’s no more than 15 1/2 inches wide, not the usual 18 inches — you’re measuring it now? How wide is it? 15 1/2 inches? Good, I’ll be right over.” Real answer: 18 inches. “Do the keys light up? Yes?” Real answer: No.), in order to save you endless frustration and repeated unnecessary trips, is a problem.
But on balance, God has blessed me with challenges, for sure, and enough gorgeous colour in my life to make it all worthwhile with reason to strive toward the future.
Filed under: Blogging
Now it’s gotta go back to the eBay seller because it turns my whole audio system “staticky” every time I plug it in.
So here is my first and only video:
Filed under: Bear, Blogging, Christoph, Videos by Loving Jacqui
Why?
I wanted to give Jacqui (Bear) something to read and enjoy until I could meet her in person. Which we now have.
At the time I created this site, I live in Canada and she lives in Australia. And I recognized in her qualities that are quite rare.
You know when you picture the sort of person you’ve wanted to be for a long time? You feel a warmth in your heart or a stirring in your spirit or even a sensation you really like. It’s just like your can hear yourself saying, “This is someone special — a keeper!”
That’s what she is to me.
Sweetheart Honey Bear
a.k.a. Jacqui from Perth, Australia
If you’ve got a few (3) minutes, I’ll tell you how we met. Make sure your speakers are on and click the audio button below and I’ll share it with you in my own voice.
However, if you don’t have speakers you can read the transcript in this Adobe PDF file 
here.
After you’ve listened to the audio post, or before if you’ve got your knickers, bloomers, boxers, gitch, mid-thigh briefs, or panties in a knot and can’t wait, you can take one more interesting step.
I promise it’s worth it. By pressing down hard on the link below, you’ll be taken to my first ever website. It’s one page. This is what Jacqui read on the first day we met:
NOTE: You’re reading the first post I ever wrote on Loving Jacqui. I edited and added to on February 4, 2008, so I could make it the “About” page on my new Loving Jacqui website design. The comment form is still open if you want to tell us what you think.
Filed under: Audios, Australia, Bear, Blogging, Christoph
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