Shows the completed steps of the automatic core upgrade process in the WordPress dashboard.

That was after i kept getting an error message and realized that i needed to disable the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin i previously used for engine upgrades. And also not counting the click to update the database after the file upgrade. But still, it was really fast, and brainless. It does not do the file and database backups like the plugin, but i’m down with that because this is just so easy.

The new dashboard and admin interface is a huge improvement. So much information, yet easy on the eyes. It all feels much more organized and structured. Haven’t checked out any other upgraded functionality, but the visual redesign in /wp-admin/ is well-done.

[Clever "trailer" previewing the new admin features.]

Ironically, i used the WordPress Automatic upgrade plugin to make the jump from 2.6.1 to 2.7b2 as i have for previous upgrades, because i hate having to download, unpack, and upload zip files. The irony being that WordPress 2.7 now includes automatic core updating, so from here on out it should be a one-click affair; this will likely be the last time i will have used WAU. In order to hack WAU to install the Beta 2 pre-release version i used WordPress’ built-in Plugin Editor to change the coded download link from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip to http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.7-beta2.zip. Just replace that URL on the line with $downloadURL, save, then proceed as usual.

I also changed my permalink structure to the cleaner /year/month/slug/ format (i originally used /log/year/month/day/slug/). So this post’s link is: http://miahz.com/2008/11/upgraded-to-wordpress-27/. Old links automatically redirect to the new addresses. No plugins necessary.

This is the WordPress.com Blog Stats graph showing traffic on miahz.com up to September.

I never would have guessed it had been increasing like this. It’s doubled since the beginning of the year. I’m honestly not sure why, because i haven’t been particularly prolific lately.

Update:
Defensio’s stats as of October 01:

• Recent accuracy: 99.60%
• 868 spam
• 1 legitimate comments
• 2 false negatives (undetected spam)
• 0 false positives (legitimate comments identified as spam)

Several “Comments could not processed by Defensio” and went to moderation last week. I haven’t had any problems since.

Ok so I still don’t know how to make a general comment, but here goes. Are you slacking? Where do you archive your links now? I wanted to forward your the mac/bmw comparison to my cousin and alas I can’t find it…

I trust and rely on you for quality content. Teehee!

I’m sorry.

I guess that’s about all i can say. As for the general comments – i recently tried a contact form (for miahz.com/contact), but that didn’t work, and took it down. So this is fine.

As for the links, i guess you could say they are homeless at the moment. It’s the thing for which i’ve yet to find a perfect solution.

How do i present and keep track of it all?

Lately it’s been simple Google Talk status messages. Because it’s simple—copy, paste. Instant. But then it just as quickly becomes vapor, with no trace. The easiest delivery method will always win; if it’s too difficult or takes too long, it won’t happen. No matter what computer i’m using, i always have Google Talk or Gmail open, so that’s where it tends to go.

The other thing i usually have is Firefox with the Delicious Bookmarks extension, which makes saving links really easy. I’ve been more disciplined about actually bookmarking stuff i find interesting or even just think i might want to remember in the future. So my del.icio.us archive is probably a solid place to check for linkage. You can even subscribe to the feed it generates if that’s your thing. Be warned: i’ll often tag links to random software or websites i come across, or lots of stuff all on one topic or product if i’m researching or shopping—but in that regard it’s maybe a decent metric of what i’m “doing” at the time.

Here are some of the past venues for what i call my wanderings:

• Right here on miahz.com [2004--2006 ... 2008Feb26--2008Apr07]
• Tumblr [2007Sep06--2008Feb25]
  It’s a superb “micro-blogging” service, and incredibly easy to post anything (links, text, quotes, photos, videos). But it lives at its own site, and there was no simple way for me to get it in front of the people i’d want to see it (it didn’t always have permalinks).
• wordpress.com [2007Jan31--2007Jul25]
  I used WordPress’s hosted service to experiment with several things, and at one time that was links.
• Ma.gnolia [2006--2007]
  Basically a del.icio.us clone. I tried to use them both for a time to test things out, but bookmarking everything twice is insanity.
• MySpace [???]
  I think there have been a few times i posted things to my blog on MySpace that didn’t end up dittoed anywhere else.
• AIM profile [2003--2005]
  I actually kept a little link blog in my Instant Messenger profile that i would manually edit and update. One day i’ll post up all those links i have saved. Wonder if any of them still work.

P.S. Apple is BMW.

I wanted to come up with something that was more me. The last one was kinda abstract for the sake of being abstract. So i started with the picture i use as my profile image for just about everything online.

The photo had to be cropped to a square icon shape, but simply cutting the sides off left the composition lacking to me. So i played with going in closer.

I was inspired (by the Layer Tennis banner) to try using the Photoshop checkered transparency pattern as the background.

Then i added a border. And scaled them as if blown up from a tiny icon, creating big blocky elements behind the irregular, organic silhouette of my face.

It looks great at full size, but the pattern and silhouette don’t quite translate to tiny icon size. I may keep the checked pattern for other uses, but for the site icon i just made the background transparent like my last one.

I might want to try some variations, but i’ll let this one ride and see if i still like it after a while. My favorite part again is the see-thru portion that looks cool on shaded tabs and location bars.

I’d like to play more with the transparency/checkered pattern stuff (different images and colors showing through), so i may be toying with that as part of a sorely-needed new theme for this site.

If you’re at all curious about the details, i had been using the Feedburner Feed Replacement plugin for WordPress to channel my feed through Feedburner’s service, so i could see statistics about subscribers and such. When i upgraded WordPress to 2.1.2 a few weeks ago, it broke (or i broke it, which is more likely). So now i’m using the Feedburner Feed Statistics Collector plugin which doesn’t hijack my feed like the other one did, but still lets me get my stats. I think it’s working, but i’m not sure because my subscriber count is still at zero.

Months ago i made miahz.com link to this blog instead of isolated project pages, which i’m pretty sure opened up the doors to the search engines. More recently i switched to the Hemingway theme, which hopefully helped some with the visual appeal. I send out my feed through FeedBurner, because apparently that’s the thing to do. I’ve dabbled with inserting ads into some of my posts here, i guess trying to understand how that whole game works. I set up and regularly check site statistics, because i wouldn’t even notice the difference otherwise. And most recently i set up comment subscription.

And for all that, Akismet tells me it’s catching more and more spam.

Now for the behind-the-scenes portion. I’m using Mark Jaquith’s Subscribe To Comments 2.0 plugin for WordPress. Installation was too easy, just dropped the new files and activated. All i changed was the “from” email address for the email notifications. Let me know if you have any problems.