gushue.net

I’ve made some minor little changes to my site lately, but didn’t really announce any of it. First, I changed the archive links for each month to be a dropdown box instead of individual links - much easier to deal with when you have a lot of older entries (thanks to Thomas for the help with that). Second, I added a RSS “friends page” of sorts. Works pretty much like the LiveJournal friends pages, except for RSS feeds. I thought about doing this quite a while ago, but didn’t want to sit down and start coding it myself. Then last week, I found out that mozillaZine feedHouse was doing exactly what I wanted, with the Planet feed aggregator. Nifty stuff. So, if you think I should add your feed to the list, just let me know. It would have to be something I’m interested in reading, though ;) But I’m always looking for something new.

And recently, I’ve been getting more emails than usual about software I’ve written. For my geekcode generator, bplog, and bpquotes. I always like to get feedback about that stuff, it makes you feel good when people use your software. It’s also a good motivation tool to fix or add things to it. I just never seem to have the time. The geekcode generator I don’t really want to do anything with anymore, since I never did like C. The bpquotes changes are something I wanted to do anyway, and would be useful to me, and bplog might start being active again with myself and Niv combining our efforts (he’s written his own entry posting stuff as well). That reminds me though, I need to reply to the person about the geekcode generator. I have no problems with the changes he’d like to make (translation). Not that I could stop him anyway, being under the GPL license and all. But I could put it on my page when he’s finished.

Lots of geek stuff in this entry. But there’s not much else new going on lately. Work has been going just fine, and summer still seems to be never coming. Maybe I’ll have something new to post about sometime.

Oh yeah, my sister recently got a kitten, so don’t be surprised to see the occasional picture :)

I seem to mostly write weblog posts on my weekends off - which are every three weeks. Not really a conscious decision, I just have more free time then. Mostly I tend to work, sleep, and laze around or play games.

Been talking a little about music with people on #lj_***** (on Lazynet), we seem to be mostly in agreement about music sucking or not. Personally, a lot of my favorite bands are from the 70’s, hardly anything from the 80’s was good except for earlier metal and punk, there was a hell of a lot of great music in the early 90’s that tapered off, and most of the last 5-10 years has been mediocre, with some good stuff (it’s not all bad). Maybe things will start to get better again in another 4 or 5 years.

Yet again, the current holiday falls on my long weekend. So I had Wednesday off, worked Thursday, and then Friday-Monday off, going back to work Tuesday night. A nice little break from things. Work’s been a little weird, with our Assistant Manager quitting, and actually getting 2 or 3 new people hired so far. Him quitting was quite unexpected, and we haven’t heard anything about why he did, and I’m not going to speculate. It could be anything at all. Coming up on two years working nights at Wal-Mart, in July. It sure doesn’t seem that long at all.

And finally, I’ve been playing EverQuest this week. Yes, the game has been out for like 5 years already, with something like 8 expansion packs. But, I picked up EverQuest: Evolution, which has the original game plus the first 5 expansions - for just $30 CAD. Not a bad price. I was going to buy Star Wars Galaxies, but EB didn’t have any left. Just as well, since my computer probably isn’t fast enough for that. It has enough problems with EverQuest. So I’ve been playing that for most of the time I’ve had off work this week. It’s fun so far, just trying out different character types and messing around. I think I’m going to start playing a Half Elf Ranger, though. I’m almost at the level where I can start using spells, and can do somewhat well solo. I wish I knew more people that played though, it’s more fun to play with friends than random strangers.

Wow, it seems there are a large, and growing, number of unhappy people with the announcement of Movable Type 3.0, and more about it here. I think their new pricing structure seems a little crazy. I could have considered paying maybe $30, with some advance notice. But not the price they want for a basic license. Maybe I’ll start looking for some new weblog software to use on gushue.net soon.

I’m such a geek. I was downloading a mod for GTA: Vice City, and I saw an ad on download.com for a Microsoft OneNote 2003 trial. It sounded interesting, so I grabbed it to install. And I’ve been messing around with that ever since, instead of playing the game :)

I was thinking about getting a new mountain bike for the last few months. I had a CCM Ice bike since 1994 or so, and it was starting to show its age. Rust, bad brakes, minor gear problems, handle grips wearing, scratches, etc. It does still work fine, though.

But I’m glad I waited for a few months. This week SportChek had a sale, and I got a $299 Arashi Tread bike for $179. It’s a 21 speed, with shocks on both front and rear wheels. Easy shifting gears. And it looks pretty nice.

I bought it on Thursday. Friday, it was cold and raining. Saturday, it was freezing and it snowed. Big change from last weekend, when it was 20+ degrees. It’s starting to warm up again though, and the roads are getting dry again. Maybe I’ll go for a ride later if it’s not too cold.

Another long weekend, another weblog post.

I think we’ve had weather for every season at some point this month. Ranging from 17°C one day, to below freezing and snowing the next day. And everything in between. At least it’s starting to warm up again today, just in time for my 3 day weekend (could have been 4 days, but I won’t get into that). My IRC news bot tells me it’s 11°C and partly cloudly. Seems about right. No plans, as usual. It’s just good to have a few days off work.

I started playing Counter-Strike again after years of not playing it. I only really played it around the beta 6.0/6.1 days, which was long ago. It doesn’t seem like cheating is as rampant as it was when I stopped playing, possibly due to that new Steam thing? Who knows how long I’ll keep playing it. I tend to play a game a lot for a while, and then just stop. Like Enemy Territory, another cool (and free) game I was playing for a while around Christmas. Haven’t played it for a few months now.

Movable Type 3.0 has started to go into public beta, but I don’t think I’m going to sign up for that. I’ll wait until the final version is released. As much as I’m interested in it, I don’t want to have to mess around with my custom templates more than necessary. And as far as I know, TypeKey isn’t available just yet. Which is one of the most interesting things about MT3. Also interesting is that they have a question about MT-Blacklist on the beta signup form. It’s sad that comment spamming is so common that such a thing is necessary. Just like SpamAssassin for email :(

Well, that was a great six days off work. Tuesday, for my personal day. Thursday, for the holiday (Good Friday). And Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for my normal long weekend that I get every three weeks. I never really did much, other than relax, sleep, and play video games. Mostly Final Fantasy X, Gran Turismo 3, and Freelancer.

I’m currently tweaking a Freelancer mod that I found (Freelancer Evolutions 1.27, or something), to be more to my liking. It’s fun. Too bad the Freelancer community seems to be mostly a bunch of morons that can’t type or spell, can’t code, and couldn’t do anything sensible with a web page if their life depended on it. Grey text on black backgrounds just isn’t a good idea. And just about every site I’ve seen uses some portal type system, which is a pain in the ass to navigate, and is also rather boring. There are a couple of good sites, but most suck.

I’m waiting on a new sealed copy of Kingdom Hearts to get here. I know a Disney RPG sounds like it’s just a kiddie game, but it does seem neat. If I end up not liking it, well it didn’t cost me all that much. eBay is great :) Of all the video games I’ve bought via there this past year or so, I think all of them were new and sealed copies. Nothing actually in used condition. Which is great. I’m not really sure what other games I want to get for my new Playstation 2 yet, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.

I should go play some GT3 for a while, before I (possibly) go to my aunt and uncle’s place to fix their computer. I’m thinking it’s going to need a reinstall, but I don’t know if I’m up for that this late in the day. Something like that would need more than an hour or two to complete, and I’m not going to stay up late today.

Last Friday, when we got our profit sharing cheques at work, I finally bought a Playstation 2. I’ve wanted one for years, ever since Gran Turismo 3 came out for it (I don’t think it was ready at the system launch, but I forget). The price finally arrived at what I think is a sensible price for a game console. It was $227 CAD for the online bundle pack, with ATV Offroad Fury 2 and the network adapter. And then $19 for GT3, and $28 for Final Fantasy X. And then my discount, even better :)

I didn’t tell my sister I was getting it, so she was quite excited when she came home from school that day and saw it on the coffee table! She’s been bugging me to get a PS2 and FFX for a long time now, heheh.

That reminds me, I should take a look on eBay to see what PS2 games are on there today. Might pick up a few more.

Just adding a new entry for testing purposes… since I’ll probably just delete it when done.

Edit: Ok, I’m mostly happy with how I have trackbacks being displayed in individual archive pages, I just need to get it automatically rebuilding it when it gets pinged. I found a page that tells you what to do, but it doesn’t want to work. I’ll figure it out.

Edit 2: I figured out why the code I added to automatically rebuild the archive page on a trackback ping wasn’t working - since I use MT-Blacklist, it overrides the default Trackback.pm, so I had to edit MTBlPing.pm instead. But it seems to be working now. I might install SimpleComments later, but not right now.

So, it’s my birthday today. I’m now 28 years old. Doesn’t feel any different from the last 4 or 5 years :)

I have to work tonight, which sucks. But coming up for Easter, I’ll have 6 days off in a row. Lucky timing for my long weekend happening the same time as a regular holiday, plus a personal day in there as well. A week off will be nice.