Site Overhaul

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Vanberge

I have taken it upon myself to make some dramatic changes to EricVB.com.

Unordered list of changes:

  • Uninstalled Gallery photo publishing software (I never update it, photos go on FB etc)
  • Uninstalled all unused plugins
  • Cleaned out the mysql database. (dropped ~60 tables of g2_*, and also ALOT of tables created by past plugins. If you’re a wordpress dev, don’t ever have your plugin create tables. Store an entry in the options table GOSH.
  • Upgraded lean/cleaned WordPress to 3.2 Beta 1
  • Upgraded immediately to 3.2 Beta 2 which was just released (svn sw ftw)
  • Decide on the new default theme called “twentyeleven”
  • Learn about creating a child theme; which is way more awesome than directly editing theme files – which, I’ve always done in the past.
  • Used my child theme to re-add sidebars to single posts and pages, put in Google analytics code, make various css tweaks

Overall, I like the look of the twentyeleven theme. But there are a couple things that I really do not understand. First:I dont really understand why they remove the sidebar on pages and on single-post permalinks – so it took me some work to figure out how to get that back in there and make it look normal (set pages to use the sidebar template; customized css for all .singular content entries).

Secondly: I cannot stand the header image size. The header in the WordPress 3.0 default theme “twentyten” was 940 x 188. This was too large for my taste, but I rolled with it and grew to be OK with it vs re-writing css to skinny it down. Now, in the 3.2 default theme of twnetyeleven, the header even larger. 1000 x 288. Seriously. TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY EIGHT pixels tall. That is nearly a third of your screen resolution before you can even see any content. It’s literally nothing but ridiculous. Therefore, I have disabled the header image completely. If any person responsible for the header image size in the theme “twentyeleven”: I hope your car dies on you tomorrow in gridlock traffic seriously.

Things are certainly still a work in progress… but I am having fun re-tooling my web presence.

Posted in Site related | 1 Comment

Signs is Better Than Blade II

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Vanberge

Signs is better...

Wikipedia:
“Reaction to Blade II among critics has been mixed”
“Signs garnered generally positive reviews from movie critics.”

IMDB:
Blade II Rating: 6.6
Signs Rating: 6.9

Metacritic
Blade II Score: 52
Signs Critic Score: 59

Rotten Tomatoes
Blade II Score: 59%
Signs Critic Score: 74%

Make no mistake about it. Any widely used movie ratings system or service will tell you that Signs is a better film than Blade II.

It’s not like Blade 2 wins on one or more of these areas. The critics and users alike universally agree by administering a higher rating than Signs on seemingly every possible system. The fact that Russ Bomhof says Blade 2 is better should alone be enough for any other man to disagree.

That is without mentioning that Signs is a innovative, creative, and attempts to create a level of depth whether or not you agree with the story. Blade II makes itself a cheesy action whore distancing itself completely from the aspects that made the first Blade movie an interesting film. I continue to give solid backing to my stance, where as critics of Signs can seemingly only cite the ending and the water aspects.

I’ll let vanbergs address that via an email:

“I really don’t understand why some people hate Signs so much. Saying it’s stupid because aliens come to our planet full of water, when water can hurt them, is in itself stupid. Humans drown in water. Maybe we should fucking move too. The sun burns our skin. We should fire a thousand arrows in the sky at all times of the day to blot out its rays. As for “swing away” and the whole concept of fate…you may not have agreed with its religious tones or method of execution, but it at least added *some* amount of depth to the story and characters.

Blade II was so bad and awful, it was a truly remarkable achievement in atrocity.”

And finally I’ll close with my own synopsis written some time ago:

While I don’t share the same undying love for Signs that I did upon first seeing it… It at least makes an attempt to tell an original story. Meaning, it’s not just an “alien movie”. The validity and execution of the preacher’s loss and reclamation of faith can be debated on and on… I feel it was done “ok” and I was able to relate to the story fairly well even though I am not religious.

Blade II is a different kind of movie all together. It is all about CGI’d action sequences, blood, vampire slaying, and sheer Wesley Snipes. But even in that, for what it is, it was cheesy BS. Nowhere near as good or innovative as the first Blade movie. It’s not a deep movie, it doesn’t go into a new level or tell an original story. On that alone, Signs is better.

Some may not like the story of Signs. Some may have wanted it to just be an alien movie. But, the point was that it shot for something greater and I don’t think it was a total failure in doing so. It’s an innnovative and creative story – I think that is un-deniable whether or not you like the film. To tell the truth, I actually think the acting in Signs was pretty good as well. From the Culkin kid, to Joaquin Phoenix, and good ol’ Mel G.

I am clearly not alone in my opinion, and clearly I am not wrong.

Everyone’s problem with Signs is whether or not they like the ending. If you don’t like the ending, then it seems for most people that ruins the entirety of the film across the board. Whether or not you liked the ending, watch the films in an attempt to appreciate the originalality of the story.

With that;
Signs is better.

Posted in Misc | Tagged | 5 Comments

The Best Possible RickRoll Method

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Vanberge

The phenomenon known as “RickRolling” is certainly nothing new. Millions have been duped into watching Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. And many, like myself, have had it done multiple times.

Some strategies to Rickrolling a would be victim might include

  • Non-specific Youtube link
  • Use of URL shorteners like Bit.ly or Goo.gl
  • URL re-direction

I’d like to take the URL re-direction bullet, make it a bit overly technical, and unleash what I am convinced is an undetectable rick roll method. Prerequisites include an apache web server with mod rewrite (probably do-able with IIS as well, but I am unaware of rewriting URLs in IIS).

  • Create a folder in the root of your web directory. Name the folder something like “index.html”.
  • Inside that folder, create a file named .htaccess (note the leading dot. Required in the name)
  • Put the following text inside that .htaccess file:

    Options +FollowSymLinks
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteRule (.*) "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0" [R=301,L]

  • Now, you can link somebody to http://www.yoursite.com/index.html and they will immediately be forwarded to Rick Astley.

I went ahead and implimented this for display purposes here: http://www.ericvb.com/yeah.html

Posted in Misc, Site related, Tech | 3 Comments

The Best Tabbed SSH Solution in Windows 7

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Vanberge

PuTTY has been the standard SSH utility for all of my Windows based workstations since approximately 2002. It is a clean, easy to use, lightweight utility that reliably allows various SSH/SSL functionality from a Windows client. However, PuTTY has grown to become a very strange and atypical application. The last version published was in April of 2007 (that is LITERALLY 4 years ago). It has a gigantic list of feature requests and bug fixes. Yet, it is still unexplainably the mainstay and flagship SSH client… And I really just don’t understand why that is. I mean really… 4 years? There are two Microsoft OS releases in that time that a developer should be considering features and usability within. I simply don’t get it.

Well, I’m initiating a changing of the fucking guard.

Vast amounts of Google research has yielded me a very sufficient and actively developed fork of PuTTY called “KiTTY“. KiTTY is obviously based on PuTTY’s source, so it retains all the reliable and usability – but it also adds a slew of new and highly requested features that seem to be destined to never reach a build of PuTTY. Some of the biggest for me are:

  • Session based username/password saving
  • Send to tray functionality
  • Transparency (not the “real” transparency… it overlays the wallpaper. But at least it’s trying!)

Sadly, even in it’s actively maintained state, KiTTY does not support a tabbed interface. I MUST have a tabbed interface. I have searched the ends of the internet for a GOOD and FREE client for SSH that can support a tabbed interface. This simply does not exist in a single package. You can fork out some cash for something like SecureCRT; or you can use something sub-par like Poderosa. But meh, who wants to do either of those things??

One has to resort to a connection manager software, such as Putty Connection Manager, Super Putty, or (by far the best) mRemoteNG. I strongly recommend mRemoteNG. It has a vast amount of configurability, supports VNC, RDP, and other protocols on top of the SSH capabilities; and it runs very well and seemingly bug free on a Windows 7 installation. The other two certainly cannot say that.

mRemoteNG even allows you to choose a custom path for your PuTTY executable (so, browse to kitty.exe) :-P

I followed these steps for an awesome tabbed SSH experience like no other; with support of multiple protocols, high amount of configurability, and even transparency! I recommend every sysadmin do the same thing. I’m sick of PuTTY being the undeserved king of this realm.

  1. Download KiTTY and save it wherever you like
  2. Download mRemoteNG installer, install it
  3. Open mRemoteNG and then click on Tools, Options. Click the “Advanced” button on the bottom right.
  4. Set your custom PuTTY executable path to your KiTTY executable
  5. Create some sessions, set the protocols, even save the usernames and passwords if you like
  6. Triumphantly raise your hands in the air, as you have the best possible SSH setup known to man. Here’s a screenie of my setup at home. I disabled transparency because my laptop doesn’t perform very well with it enabled.

Posted in Tech | 14 Comments

Windows 7 Right Click Lag on Desktop Shortcuts

Posted on March 22, 2011 by Vanberge

I’ve had a nagging issue lately that has really been bugging me. Whenever I right click on a shortcut on my desktop, I get a 1-2 second lag before the context menu will pop out. It wasn’t a “huge” deal so I put it off for a rainy day. When I finally started trying to figure the problem out, I naturally resorted to Googling. This is a case where Google couldn’t help. There are too many results talking about generic right-click lag; or lag when you right click just on the desktop area. My issue was a bit more specific; in that I was right clicking specifically on a shortcut.

I used procmon to determine that the nVidia drivers were making wild registry/file calls (big suprise, it’s nVidia’s driver).

I then started searching through context menu entries in the registry trying to make sense of how to resolve the issue. I could fairly easily see how the layout worked, and that each file type had it’s own context menu entry set. After some trial and error, needless reboots, and co-worker confirmation: These steps are confirmed to resolve the issue. NOTE: if you are not comfortable editing a system registry; make sure you take steps necessary to have appropriate backups (A good idea even if you are comfortable with regedit).

  • Start, run/search, and type “regedit” minus the quotes
  • Delete the key named “OpenGLShExt” from the relevant locations (I chose lnkfile and exefile respectively
    1. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\lnkfile\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\OpenGLShExt
    2. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\OpenGLShExt
    3. Make sure you delete the entire key; not just the default value within the key.
  • If you notice right click lag on any other filetypes, as I did notice .bat, .msc, and a couple others; just repeat the same steps at that section of the registry. Maybe even get rid of ALL the references to this horrible key.
    1. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\OpenGLShExt

These keys were certainly causing the 1-2 second lag when I right clicked on shortcuts. Once they were deleted, I instantly saw the lag disappear without even needing to reboot. Now hopefully Google can index this and try to help some other people out. Since it took me about 5 hours total to get to this point. :-)

Posted in Tech | Leave a comment

My Personality

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Vanberge

Recently at work we have been trying to improve communications skills and tactics. As part of that, we’ve had to learn and determine our Myers Briggs personality type. These personality types are widely researched, studied, and considered a very accurate representation of a person’s traits.

The general idea is that you have to determine your personality traits you have. For example: Are you introverted or extroverted? Do you rely on senses or intuition? Are you a thinker or a feeler? etc.

There are various means of self-rating and determining; as well as plenty of online test/questionnaires that make an attempt to determine your personality type for you. When I self-rated, I came out as an “ISFJ” – which I must say is a pretty accurate description of my personality. See below:

“The ISFJ feels a strong sense of responsibility and duty. They take their responsibilities very seriously, and can be counted on to follow through. For this reason, people naturally tend to rely on them. The ISFJ has a difficult time saying “no” when asked to do something, and may become over-burdened. In such cases, the ISFJ does not usually express their difficulties to others, because they intensely dislike conflict, and because they tend to place other people’s needs over their own. The ISFJ needs to learn to identify, value, and express their own needs, if they wish to avoid becoming over-worked and taken for granted.”

However, I was interested to see that I sometimes am rated as an INFJ when I take online tests/questionnaires that determine my personality type for me. And this personality type does also seem to run quite parallel to mine. Specifically, one section quite strongly caught my eye:

“INFJs may fantasize about getting revenge on those who victimize the defenseless. The concept of ‘poetic justice’ is appealing to the INFJ.”

That concept does really ring pretty heavy with me – as most of my favorite movies and TV shows always seem to have some degree of a revenge/justice theme. I’ve even blogged about it before.

Whether I’m an INFJ or an ISFJ I guess doesn’t really matter that much – but overall it’s been an interesting experience of self-reflection to try and determine and label my various personality traits. It’s also fun for me to try to guess my friends/family members. So if anyone reading this knows theirs, feel free to comment.

Posted in Journal | 5 Comments