geek ramblings » Holidays

International Delete Your MySpace Account Day

Dougal — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:37:14 +0000

I just found out that January 30th is International Delete Your MySpace Account Day. What an awesome birthday present — I’m there, dude!

Iâ€™ve been thinking about deleting my Myspace account almost since the day I got it but always opted out of doing so because of the few friends I have who donâ€™t have Facebook accounts. But by remaining on Myspace, I realize, Iâ€™m becoming an enabler. Iâ€™m giving those friends no reason to switch over from Myspace by giving them access to my Myspace profile.

The only reason I even have a MySpace account in the first place is because at my last job, we needed to test how to format our video player embed code on MySpace. I did find one actual friend on MySpace, but since my wife and I now have email addresses for her and her husband…

The sole remaining reason for me to visit MySpace anymore would be to catch up on news about Weird Al. And really, there’s not much reason to visit it for that, because that’s not the official Weird Al website, anyhow (though, it is really his account).

I’m adding a reminder on my calendar to delete my MySpace account on January 30. How about you?

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Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Dougal — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 14:11:34 +0000

Ahoy! It’s time for Talk Like a Pirate Day again! Don’t forget to install my Text Filter Suite Plugin if you want to get your WordPress blog into the action.

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Piratify Your Blog!

Dougal — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:46:58 +0000

There’s only one week left until Talk Like a Pirate Day! If you haven’t already downloaded my Text Filter Suite, which contains the awesome tfs-pirate filter, then you’d better hop to it! What’s that? You want to know what it does? It turns your blog into pirate-speak on Talk Like a Pirate Day! Well, it does some other stuff, too, but we’re mostly concerned with the piratey bits here.

For example, if you typed this:

I was driving to my girlfriend’s house the other day, and some guy cut me off and almost ran my car off the road! I hate when people do stupid things like that. Don’t you?

Then it might come out something like this:

I were sailin’ t’ me girlfriend’s house th’ other day, and some lubber cut me off and almost ran me boat off th’ sea, avast! I hate when scallywags do daft thin’s like that. Don’t ye, and a bucket o’ chum?

Doesn’t that make you wish that every day was Talk Like a Pirate Day?

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Knock, knock…

Dougal — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 15:41:55 +0000

I know, I know… I haven’t been very active on the blogging front lately. Once again I’ve been sucked into a swirling vortex of job and home projects, with little-to-no time for participating in blogdom. I’ve managed to keep up with most of the latest memes, and I’ve added a few new del.icio.us bookmarks, but there’s been no opportunity to develop any nifty code or write about the subject of the day.

I’ve got eight draft posts in my queue, and three of those are no longer timely, and so I’ll probably end up deleting them. Of the remaining five, one is about how to use the WordPress object cache in plugins, another is about separation of presentation from business logic in HTML::Mason (a mod_perl web framework), one is an explanation of what blog ping services are, and the last two are non-technical. The ping service post is the only one that I’ve actually written any content for, and I started writing that one nearly a year ago. The others are basically nothing more than links to articles I was going to comment on, or placeholders to remind me that I wanted to write something about the subject.

Most of my time lately has been tied up with my day job. We’ve had some big projects on tight deadlines, and we developers had to really push to get things done on schedule. I’ve had to work late at the the office several times in the past few weeks, and that throws off our schedule for getting home projects done.

At home, we’ve been trying to finish building the rest of our bedroom funiture (we’ve almost finished the final piece, a wardrobe). And we still need to finish stripping and repainting the dressers for the girls’ room. We’re also trying to get things cleaned up in general, in preparation for out-of-town family visitors for Independence Day weekend. We’re going to have a very crowded house, with lots of kids to wrangle. If you don’t hear from me again after July 4th, it might mean that we didn’t survive.

And I’m not the only one who’s busy. Susan has her hands full keeping up with Jamie’s summer program, therapies, and doctor visits, Mary’s activities, and taking care of baby Claire, along with everything else. And when she can grab a spare minute on her computer, she’s been working on the website for her 20th class reunion.

So, for the three of you who were just about to delete me from your list of sites to visit, don’t abandon me yet! I should be posting more articles soon-ish. In the meantime, why don’t you take a break and enjoy the sounds of summer?

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return(true);

Dougal — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 16:32:50 +0000


function do_stuff() {
  if (in_array($date, $holidays) && $vacation == true) {
    travel('away');
    visit_family();
    $gifts->exchange();
    eat();
    travel('home');
  }

  if ($new_year == true) {
    eat() && drink();
    $weight++;
    $sleep = false;
  }

  $slack = false;
  $resolve++;

  $work->resume();

  return(true);
}

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Happy Halloween

Dougal — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 16:58:24 +0000

Goblin Dougal

Halloween has snuck up on the Campbell household. It’s not like we’re unprepared — we have bags of candy and the kids have costumes. But I just can’t believe that it’s the end of October already. I spent the last couple of weeks under some tight deadlines at work, and lost track of time.

I had hoped to dress my site up as I’ve done a couple of times in the past, but I just never had time to work on a stylesheet for the holiday. Maybe I’ll be able to do something for Christmas…

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Talk Like a Pirate (and TFS updates)

Dougal — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 16:31:05 +0000

Talk Like a Pirate Day is next Monday (September 19), less than a week away. Dust off your eyepatch, dig up that gold hoop earring, and practice growling, “walk the plank!” And while you’re at it, don’t forget to make sure that you have my Text Filter Suite plugin installed on your WordPress blog, and activate your Pirate filter!

Speaking of which, if you have an old version of the filters, you should download the new version. The tfs-core.php file is now version 1.1, is compatible with WordPress 1.5, and has been renamed to zzz-tfs-core.php (this forces it to load after the other filters, so it will be able to detect their functions correctly). The tfs-acronymit and tfs-pirate filters have also been updated with more phrases and WordPress 1.5 compatibility fixes.

Arrr! Prepare to be boarded, ye scurvey dog!

Update: Kelson Vibber pointed out a problem with comment RSS feeds. Updated versions of the TFS plugin or links to just the affected core file are available on the TFS Plugin post.

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