Mayhem & Chaos: The Blog

When I first installed Wordpress I was eager to jump right in. Little did I know that being on a Windows server would have great impact on how my blogs would function. I had to search high and low for plugins to make my emails work via the wpPHPMailer and other little things. What upset me the most was that I was not able to have pretty URLs or the nice permalink structure we’re accustom to seeing on blogs.

This was a hard find back then but I kept with it. I couldn’t find it on Wordpress forums or anything. Then I Google’d and search and search and finally came across this solution from Keyboard Face:

To install, copy and paste this text into a file named wp-404-handler.php:

<?php
$qs = $_SERVER[‘QUERY_STRING’];
$_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’] = substr($qs, strpos($qs, ‘:80′)+3);
$_SERVER[‘PATH_INFO’] = $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’];
include(‘index.php’);
?>

Next set the 404 error page to /wp-404-handler.php. If it gives you a choice between file and url, choose url.

Lastly, make sure you enable permalinks in the Wordpress control panel under Options > Permalinks.

Thanks again to Tom at Keyboard Face, Einar and CaptainN for posting it on the Support Forum in Wordpress

StumbleUpon is a actually a great tool when it comes to me looking for inspiration and just random fun things on the web. However, I’ve stumbled upon some blogs boasting the benefits of using stumble to gain more visits to their site. While this is true, it doesn’t bring much worthwhile traffic.

Now, my blog generates some good traffic for only being around for a few months. People are still finding me for my one Cloverfield posting I made a few months back. I used to Stumble! my own posts and submit them to Digg to generate more traffic with awesome results; as far as visits go. Then I noticed that most of those visits had very shorts sessions. I know when I Stumble! I usually click and click and click until something actually grabs my attention. I’m assuming most you do the same.

I feel that stumbling your own posts just to get more visits isn’t the best way of using this tool. I hope that someday soon people will start stumbling my posts and submitting them to Digg so I can actually generate good quality leads. Either way, don’t fall into the darkside of StumbleUpon and think it’s the end-all-be-all of generating traffic to your site or blog. I’ve found the commenting on other blogs really helps and just simply being patient. Here’s an example of a regular week from my analytics with a posting I stumbled and the days following:

Maybe if I ever start make money off my blog I’ll be more concerned about how much or how little traffic I get. Hope you enjoyed, now I’m going to Stumble this

If any of you caught the series premiere of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles you might has been a little disappointed like I was. Overall I have to say that the show was pretty good and I hope to see it take off so I have another Monday night show to watch other than Heroes.

The thing that I found most disappointing was the weak-ass portrayal of Sarah Connor. This series is supposed to take place shortly after T2: Judgment Day and last time I saw it, Sarah Connor was no cry-baby. io9.com has a good posting and review of the show. The T.V. show almost feels like it takes place after Terminator, where Sarah is still a little less “aggressive”, rather then the hardcore, M-16 toting T2 Sarah Connor.

Understandably the lack of good character portrayal is due to the writer’s strike, but I’m not going to pin it all on them. I’m sure the execs wanted to tone it down too, but why, I don’t know - it’s the damn Terminator story.

Another factor that I wasn’t too impressed by, which I’m sure every guy will disagree with me, is the new guardian Terminator, Cameron (a possible nod to James?), played by Summer Glau of Firefly and Serenity fame. Now, please don’t get me wrong, I have no objection to seeing her in the show, but was her character just put in there for the sake of eye-candy and appealing to us guys or concrete reasons? If anything, I’d like to see her in a killer Terminator role, like Kristanna Loken did.

I’m gonna wait it out and keep with it to see how the story pans out. It’s almost like watching Titanic (another Cameron piece) where you know how it will end (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) but you want to see how they get to that point.

Update: After reading some more articles, reviews and the wikipedia article, I’ve come to realize that this show completely omits the storyline of T3: Rise of the Machines. The Sarah Connor Chronicle (hate that title) is an alternate storyline. I guess you can do that when it comes to time travel - no such thing as continuity.

The movie contains an example of a predestination paradox. The Terminator’s mission in the first movie is to go back in time and kill Sarah Connor, thereby preventing John Connor from being the leader of the resistance forces. However, had the Terminator not been sent back, Kyle Reese would not have been sent back to father John, preventing John from being born. The Terminator is also reverse engineered and used to create Skynet. By sending the Terminator and Kyle Reese back in time, Skynet and Connor ensure their own existence. Does your head hurt now?