website

misc site updates

over the past few days i've been making some updates to the site.

i've been struggling with the decision of staying with the current template i've made for my site, or porting the entire thing over into the WordPress database.

obviously, having things in the WordPress database may make things easier to manage - but i'm not sure if im ready yet to give up the standard file and directory structure i've grown use to over the past 10 years of having a web site.

regardless, i've been playing with how things look. i've been messing with my CSS and layout to see if i can give a site a fresh look, and maybe even come across a style i may want to try to convert into a WordPress theme. i've been playing with various pre-made WordPress themes as well.

misc site updates Read More »

bunches of updates

well, most of them wont be noticed by anyone.

since upgrading to WordPress 2.x, 404 errors havent been working correctly. WP2 has the index.php handle all 404 requests. which is fine if you use a WP theme, but i dont. the default WP theme's setup is designed to handle any 404 request thrown at it. i had to work some of that code into my site to make things work. i didnt know of any other way to make 404s work again. the WordPress.org website has a ton of posts in their forum where people cant get 404s to work. none of the "solutions" posted there helped me.

besides getting 404s working again, i also changed it so every page in the archive will be titled. when my site was spidered, every page in the archive was titled "Xenomorph dot Net", which made the site map i had almost useless.

bunches of updates Read More »

i can never think of a unique user name for stuff

like, i went to buy Half-Life 2 on Steam, and was presented with the "lol youre gonna get all the games added to your account that you already paid for" game-waste screen (other than the HL2/Source-based games, i had already purchased every game shown), and that made me want to make sure that i only purchase Half-Life 2 for a NEW Steam account (giving me two seperate accounts for things like Counter-Strike, Natural Selection, etc).

so i log off Steam, and go to make a new account. every username and variation of user names i've used for other services are in use, or "contain invalid characters."

its like that when i go to register on forums. "Xenomorph" is of course taken a dozen times over on everything. i was lucky to get the name Xenomorph for the Gmail service, but that was because i paid for an invite early in the beta. "Xenomorph9632" doesnt seem as cool when signing up for something.

i guess if i was more creative, i'd have an awsome/unique name that i knew others didnt have, and that it didnt look too dorky. when i come up with names like "NeonGerbil" or whatever for things like instant messengers and forums, i think people look at that name and visualize who knows what - but it probably ends up being some gerbil/butt joke to them. just using the screen name "SilicoN18" on AOL/AIM would get me several "lol boobs" jokes - when my screen name has nothing to do with silicone implants, but with computer parts made from silicon.

i can never think of a unique user name for stuff Read More »