WordPress 1.5 Strayhorn

The new version 1.5 of WordPress is out, get it here.

But be advised – there might be a lot of work to it (if you’ve customized a lot of stuff!).

My To-Do-List:

  • Reinstall AntiSpam-Solution – Done
  • Get site to work at all – Done cheers Aaron
  • Get Gravatars to work again properly – Done
  • Update smilies – Done
  • Get different versions to work again – WAP+Mobile
  • Get about, advertise and contact working again… – Done, you gotta love the new pages function
  • Get WP-Grins again…
  • add WP-Stats again…

Sidenote: The only thing that bothers me is that they included the whole no-follow thing and there’s no way to turn it off (yet) :tdown: – Fixed thanks to John :tup: !

G’Day World Sponsorship Auction on ebay

Update: Hehe, they’re already mentioning me even though the auction isn’t even closed yet…yes, I’m known as handychef at ebay ;-)
(check out Podcast 6)
end update

I don’t know if you’re a podcast fan or not, but one of the best podcasters around (G’Day World‘s Cameron Reilly and Mick Stanic) are auctioning the sponsorship of their upcoming podcasts up on ebay (see the auction) – and believe it or not, I’m still the leading bidder :mrgreen:

I don’t know if there’s noone else interested or if they’re all lined up to “snipe” at the end of the auction – I guess I’ll find out sooner or later (auction ends Feb-04-05 04:10:41 PST)…

(For more infos see the announcement thread)

(rel=” nofollow “)

This seems like something that will really spark discussion around the blogosphere and hopefully it’ll prevent some spammers from spamming, although I doubt it: what the hell do they care about the PR of a link that spammed into my blog? It’s either hard to even get something through (multi-layer antispam) and even if something slips through it’s just a matter of time until it’s deleted – I don’t think that the PR update will even recognize this?! And what about people posting interesting stuff in comments – doesn’t such a link have any value?

I’ll abstain from installing it atm though as I value links in comments, as long as they aren’t from some spam-bot, which should hopefully be caught anyway.

On another note: this might as well prove itself useful for linking to people without giving them credit, which was impossible so far.

More can be read at Google’s info page

The WP Plugin.

Wide gravatars are go

Tom Werner just wrote about it: the distribute gravatar proxy system is ready (read more about it here). This way the main gravatar server will be relieved a little bit and even if there’s a problem with the mainserver the gravatars will still show up just fine.

All you need to do is edit the gravatars plugin (change the url to wide.gravatar.com* where * is the query string which doesn’t need to be edited) :tup:

via Neil’s World.

Need hosting?

If you’re on the lookout for a new hosting package, I think you should have a look at the newest crazy domain packages over at Dreamhost. Not only did they recently triple the bandwith, but they tripled the space now, too. The smallest package (Crazy Domain Insane) was: 800MB space and 40GB bandwith – this is now 2.400MB space and 120GB bandwith!

I guess it’s time to move over Ingoal.info over, too – I’ve already got an account with them hosting two of my other domains… :rolleyes:

If you’re interested in signing up with them: do me a favor and use the link above or the following pic, you will get the hosting and I will get a little bit of commision :mrgreen:

Get Dreamhost hosting now!

New phonelines + dsl provider

“Konkurrenz belebt das Geschaeft” is an old german saying (roughly translates to: competition is good for trade), which seems to be so true in the current online- and phone-market. We’ve had our phonelines and dsl-setup from the biggest german provider (Telekom (T-Com + T-Online)) forever, but it seems it’s time to move on. We were paying a nifty amount of 74,19€ basic charge for a ISDN-connection (two digital lines), dsl-setup with 768kbit down, 128kbit up and a flatrate. As they’re changing their port-setup you’re forced to upgrade to 1MBit down, 128kbit up on January 1st 2005 – as this is an auto-upgrade there’s nothing you can do about it, apart from moving on or paying 4 €/month more for this “speed increase”. This would bring up our basic charge to 78,19€ which equals 106,10$. :brickwall:

As I think this is ridiculously high for the provided service I told my folks that we should look around for alternatives. As I’m the geek of the family I did the checking and came up with different solutions.

  • Leave ISDN-connection with Telekom and switch online stuff to cable. This would have cut the online-costs to 39€/month (Telekom: 16,99€ + 29,99€ flat = 46,98€) – an improvement, but not quite the cut I had hoped for. :tdown:
  • Switch complete connection (ISDN + DSL) to the competition. In this case to the second largest phone provider (Arcor)…and bingo. Just made the switch (just waiting for the paper work being sent our way and we’re gone – see more details below) :tup:

The Arcor deal is quite sweet:

  • ISDN just like with Telekom. They’re handling all the switches and legal stuff (canceling the old commitment to Telekom, switching over all our MSNs, etc)
  • They’re offering both a DSL-flat and a phone-flat (all calls are free, except for calls to mobile phones).
  • The DSL basic charge and the flatrate are way cheaper.

Cost factor:

  • ISDN basic charge: 19,95€
  • DSL basic charge: 10€
  • DSL-flat: 9,95€
  • phone-flat: 19,95€
  • upgrade DSL to 2MBit (2MBit down, 192kbit up): 5€
  • Grand total: 64,85€ (equals 88$)

Now that looks more like it. We’re saving around 14€/month, but wait, that’s the absolute minimum as we’ve got a phone-flat now, which we didn’t have with Telekom, so it’s gonna be even more, month after month after month (we had one invoice of less than 100€ in the whole year 2004) – and I’ve got double bandwith as soon as the switch is made :mrgreen:

Recent browsing…a is for…

Inspired by Aaron‘s and Jeremy‘s posts:

A is for Arlt.com – computer store
B is for Bloglines
C is for Coresite
D is for Dict.leo.org
E is for ebay.de
F is for fcm2.info
G is for Gmail
H is for heise.de
I is for Ingoal.info (hehe)
J is for tragically null
K is for Kundenbetreuung – eplus (customer service of my mobile phone provider)
L is for Landkreis Coburg (went there during research for wikifun.de)
M is for My Ebay
N is for NBA.com
O is for Osthoff innovations
P is for Paypal.de
Q is for nothing
R is for ranking.com
S is for sitepoint.com/forums
T is for t-com.de (checking around for a new phone contract)
U is for Brian’s blog
V is for vr networld ebanking
W is for Wikifun.de Homepage
X is for nothing
Y is for nothing
Z is for zdf.de

Almost everything filled I guess – it seems I’m browsing the web a little bit too much these days :smile: