In a fit of impulse geekitude, I’ve rented a dedicated server. It runs Ubuntu Linux, which is what I run at home and am currently writing this post with, so the ground is familiar, however I’ll have to get used to managing things entirely by command line. Something I should be doing regardless.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this website. Davebgimp.com is hosted on a shared server with BlueHost, who are seriously superb webhosts, IMHO. My account is paid in advance with them for another fifteen months, so probably I’ll just leave this website where it is.

For the near future, I’ll mainly be using this new-fangled server as a secure proxy host so I can get around redundant web filtering and also safely use open wifi spots without risking my passwords and data. I have a few other domains registered that I suppose I could move over to it, maybe even set up a mail server, I’m not sure. I’ve never really run a server before, so it’s all new shit to me.

The sidebar section containing all the links, categories and archives was getting way too cluttered for my liking, so I freed up some space by moving the largest of the sections, the archive list, to it’s own separate page, whicch you’ll notice is now listed in the sidebar under “Navigate”.

This evening, I made a switch to a new plug-in to handle my Technorati Tags. Since the move to WordPress 2.0, I’d been having problems with my old tag manager, Bunny’s Technorati Tags and Ultimate Tag Warrior came highly recommended, so I decided to give it a try and see. Immediately I noticed that it was in a much bigger league and even though Bunny’s has just recently been fixed with 2.0, I made the call and switched.

So I’m liking this new plug-in and everything looks sunny and joyful, except for the fact that all my tags that were assigned in the past via Bunny’s are no longer around. That sincerely blows, but whatever. There’s a way to rescue them, but as of this moment a bit to A.D.D. to manage it slogging through help files and forums. When I do get it down, I’ll note how I did it here. For now, I just wanted to post something, just to see UTW in action. Sweet.

Update:

Now I am seriously impressed. Within ten minutes of posting this entry, the creator of UTW popped on by and clued me in on how to rescue all my old tags. That is way cool. Thank you Christine D. UTW is a great plug-in and it’s developer made my day!

In an effort to keep from falling asleep maintaining my own website, I’ve been thinking (and thunking) of different things to do, smell, fondle and roll around in. Don’t say I never did nothin’ fer youse slobs.

One of the many criticisms I’ve endured on this wretched and slightly moist journey on spaceship earth is that I’m a full-of-shit-know-it-all. I know everything and if I don’t, I’ll fucking make it up and deliver it so convincingly, you might as well swallow it as truth, straight from the nun’s ass. I am a fountain of fact, hear me spurt, watch me sputter.

So with this torrid truth in mind and at heart, a thought occured to my little, old, gnome-like self. Wouldn’t it be just peachy keen to start a question and answer section, O brilliant and infallible one?

The answer, of course, was a resounding “Motherfucking right! You are a monkey-humping gen-u-ine genius, daveb!” While it’s never a great idea to engage in screaming dialogs with one’s self while in a public setting such as the office, it seems like a good idea and I’m going to roll with it.

If you have a question, a problem or issue that bedevils your mind, crusts your brain-stem and has you twisting and sweating up the bedsheets in the wee hours of the morning, daveb is your man. Be it a question of love, who killed Kennedy, or who the fuck is Keyser Soze, just ask daveb and he’ll clue your punk ass in.

You can submit questions to daveb here or you can email webmaster [at] davebgimp [dot] com with “Ask daveb” as the subject line. Citizens of Spaceship Earth, fear not! Your questions will be answered!

A reader who for one reason or another is not able to use RSS feeds wrote to me asking if there was another way to be notified when a new post is made to this site. Ever the intrepid do-gooder, I enabled readers to sign up for email notifications using this fine plugin. You’ll notice that in the lower part of the right-hand sidebar, under Syndicate, along with the RSS feed links, you now have a form to input your email address. If you are able to use RSS, I recommend you stick with it, but if not, you now have another option. Rest assured, daveb will not share your email for any reason and you may unsubscribe at any time. If you do sign up, yet are not receiving the notifications, let me know.

This site’s not going anywhere. I think I’m just going to take a vacation for a bit. I’m working slowly on a redesign. Best thing to do is subscribe to the RSS feed (you’ll also find a link at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar on this page), that way you’ll be alerted when things start picking up again. Anyways, like I said… short vacation.

Thanks,
daveb

If you glance to your right at the sidebar, under the heading of Navigate, you’ll see a new link called ‘Photos‘. Clicking this link will allow you to browse a shitload of pictures I’ve taken in the past 4-5 years. All the images are actually hosted on my Flickr account, but I am using a WordPress plugin called Falbum that makes use of Flickr’s API. It’s neat. It’s purty. I likes it.

I’ve got everything working, but please bear with me as over the next couple days I tweak things here and there with this photo album.

##Update##
The domain name has transferred and everything seems to be up and running correctly. Please let me know if you encounter errors.
#########

Please bear with me over the next couple of days as I once again change webhosts. I’m setting the new site up today and the domain transfer should be finished in 48 hours or less. It’s likely that the whole move will be unnoticeable.

My current host, hostinglite.com, is completely unreliable and it’s one of those things where at least once a week, something on their end fucks up. They’re cheap as hell, so I guess I’m getting what I paid for, but I need a site that works and is not consistently down because of SQL problems and nameserver issues, so if I have to pay more, so be it.

This time I am taking the easy route and selecting the host at the top of the recommended list on WordPress.org. If I pay a year up front, it’s only a dollar more than what I pay now for my lame-ass service. BlueHost.com, let’s hope they pull through.

If you’ve visited this site recently and noticed a big fat WordPress connection error instead of my blog, I apologize and ask you to please bear with. I switched hosts recently and apparantly they are having problems with their MySQL. They tell me they’re working on it so I’ll give them a couple more days, but if the issue’s not resolved, I’ll be moving this site elsewhere. If you visit and do happen to get the error message, try checking back in a few minutes, it usually remedies itself. Again, sorry for the trouble.

Hi kids! davebgimp.com is currently hosted by a crappy-ass company whose servers have crashed one too fucking many times. Their customer support is farmed out of Croatia (not that I have anything against Croatia at all) and they just all around suck big donkey balls. I am in the process of switching to what I hope will be a more reliable host. The process should be seamless and finished at some point over the course of the next two days. Please bear with me while this is happening and please drop me a line if you notice any errors or problems. Hopefully all will go well. By the way, if you’re shopping around for a web host, you’d do well to stay away from aplus.net. They really suck and have some sketchy ass business practices. If you want to know more about just how shady this company is, don’t take my word for it, just do a Google search or do a search at webhostingtalk.com for more disturbing information about this company.