Chelle is right. I’ve said it twice. I have not been doing anything with this blog for the last couple of months. Why? I’ve been busy. I graduate with my Master’s degree in a couple of weeks. I’ve been doing work for the school I work at. Any free time has been spent with my family and friends. I just haven’t had time to do much of anything here. Not to say I haven’t been working on the blog though.

If you look at the main site, http://saphrym.com, you’ll notice there is a placeholder theme there. I’ve been working on the design in the background. That will be the new location of the blog once I am finished. I have three main passions in life: family, teaching, and writing. The new blog (yes, this one will “queitly” disappear, but not completely) will focus on the writing. I plan on having anecdotes, editorials, creative writing, etc. I will be doing some editing on posts already on this blog to make them just a little bit better for the new blog.

Also, the ads will be going away. I no longer care if the blog makes money. Why? Becuase I feel as if it’s been commercial and it just doesn’t fit me well. You’ll find no paid links on the new blog. You’ll find no ads. There is one exception to this though: While  working on the blog over the last couple of years, I have made some friends who I would like to support. So I will be using CMFAds to support them and to support the bloggers that use them. These friends are people like Turnip, Stan, and Ben. Yes, I have made others also who are linked in my blogroll. Most of the friends I have made are now part of CMFAds, so I will keep that service. They will remain my exclusive ad service.

When will this all happen? I don’t know. Maybe soon. Maybe in the Summer. I just don’t know. I’ll take a line from Blizzard Entertainment and say: “When it’s done.” But I will try and keep my readers up to date until then. Don’t worry. It will happen. After all, I spent good money on the theme I’m modifying for the new blog.

Speaking of my readers, what are your favorite posts from my blog? I’d love to know so I can make sure they are included in the new launch.

Posted by Saphrym

I know. I know. It’s been a while and it hasn’t been very often. But I’ve been doing a lot of work in the background. Saphrym.com is about to relaunch with a new goal in mind. Look for the new launch in less than 2 weeks. Posts will be updated more often and the categories will make more sense. Oh, if you’re interested in writing for Saphrym.com, make sure to Contact me. I’ll give you more details.

Posted by Saphrym

So, anyone know a good way to prevent DoS attacks? When you’re on a shared server? My site has been down the last week because someone decided to pick on me for some reason and deny my website it’s meager existence. Feel free to discuss it in the forum also. But I could use soem suggestions. I already use Bad Behavior. Super Cache scares me because it constantly messes up WordPress installations. So I just don’t know what to do. I had so many ideas for posts that disappeared because I couldn’t access my site. I’m one of those people that has to write it right then. Never thought to just write it in a text file and copy and paste later. So I guess I learned a few things from this:

1. Write down all ideas for posts somewhere.
2. Write posts in other programs if necessary.
3. Be willing to deal with site downtime because you’ve been targetted for some unknown reason by a DoS aattack from an unknown assailant.
4. Never wear cotton gloves in the rain.

So, any ideas?

Posted by Saphrym

I’d make some New Year’s resolutions, but I tend to never actually accomplish them. So I’m going to jinx my goals by making them resolutions.

Hope you had a great holiday season! And welcome to 2009!

Posted by Saphrym

Ok. So I got tagged. And everyone who has ever kept up with me knows I don’t follow the rules of tags. But I will at least let you know I was tagged by Pushhyarag2000 over at Evolve.Ever. So now I’m supposed to tell you 6 random things about myself. Hmmm.

1. I have never seen the Godfather movies. There. I said it. My shame is out there for the world to see. I feel so violated.
2. I love coconut. Well, at least I love the kind that is shredded, has sugar added, and is coated in chocolate. It’s my favorite kind. Tends to grow on special bushes out here in Kentucky. I’ve planted many of them in my yard. I’d show you pictures, but you’d only think they were Photoshopped.¹
3. I just took a sip of Diet Dr. Pepper.²
4. I’m thinking about how the 4 is going to show up on the left of this particular line even though I actually placed <li> at the beginning. The beauty of HTML, right?³
5. I love white tigers.⁴ I think they look cool:⁵
   
6. 01001001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101111 01101100 00101110⁶

So there you have it. 6 random things about me. And if you didn’t read the footnotes, you should. They were even more random, and that’s what this is all about, right? Oh, and if you have any random things to say about yourself, feel free to leave a comment including them, or even a link to a post on your blog that has 6 of them already.⁷

1. And they would be because there’s no such thing as a bush that grows chocolate covered coconut. Although it would be a wonderful experiment in cross breeding. Somebody needs to work on that now. [«]
2. Can you tell I’m reaching already? [«]
3. Ok. Now I’m not only reaching but being a geek at the same time. Sheesh. [«]
4. I could never own one. Imagine the feeding costs and the cost to get them declawed. Ouch. [«]
5. Although I don’t think Zebras are cool. Hmmm. [«]
6. See? I’m being geeky again. Try this site to decode that message: http://www.nickciske.com/tools/binary.php [«]
7. Or 7, or 8, or even 172. [«]

Posted by Saphrym

So, I just finished watching the third episode of Leverage. It’s a new TV show on TNT. I have to say it has steadily moved to the top of my favorite shows list. Every episode is self contained, unlike shows like Heroes, and it’s a smart show that has managed to evoke some emotions out of me. Of course, this frightens me because every time a smart show that evokes emotions out of me gets on TV it’s canceled within 5 episodes. So I’ll have to see if this one continues.

As for the show itself, Entertainment Weekly called it “…better than the last two Ocean’s movies.” I’d have to amend that and call it “The A-Team meets Ocean’s Eleven.” That’s exactly what it is. But better. It’s about a bunch of crooks who are headed by an ex-insurance investigator that do good things for people. It’s very reminiscent of Ocean’s Eleven in it’s cinematography and style. It’s also like the A-Team when it comes to a group of people doing good for others but not necessarily following the laws while doing so. You’d have to watch it to form your own opinion. It airs on TNT on Tuesdays at 10/9c. If you want to see the first two episodes, go here: http://www.tnt.tv/dramavision/?cid=44213.

Do yourself a favor and check it out. There’s a line in the second episode that really got me. After you watch it, let me know in comments which line you think it is.

Posted by Saphrym

So, after getting our new jobs, my wife and I got a new car. Why? Because the old van was having a terrible time with coughing fits and nights of sleeplessness. Oh, wait, that was me. The van was guzzling too much gas. And it also was beginning to tremble at the thought of being driven. So, what did we get? The title says it all: A PT Cruiser. Below is a picture of it. We’re actually enjoying it quite a bit. It’s about 2 years old but has a 3 year warranty left on it. It’s got some nice features. One of my favorites is that it has an auxiliary input so we can hook up our mp3 players to the radio directly¹. Of course, the best feature is that it doesn’t have a dent the size of a small island nation on the passenger side door. That’s always a plus. Check it out:

It’s the same red all of our other vehicles have ever been². A coincidence? Probably. I like black and my wife likes blue. This one was in our price range and gets great mileage. So we got what we got.

1. instead of using one of those FM modulators that only sound like bad radio stations [«]
2. except for the van, which was white [«]

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You know, I forgot all about showing you guys the cake my students made for me for my last day as their substitute teacher. Hmmm. I may not have even told you guys about that. I was a substitute for a teacher who had her baby. I taught the same class for about 8 weeks. During that time, I claimed them as my students. And actually, I still claim them as my students.¹ Although I have new students, I miss those students very much. So without further ado, here’s a picture of a cake they made for me for my last day.

1. I just can’t help it. I got to know them all so well. [«]

Posted by Saphrym

“Huh?”

Yeah. That title would confuse me too. At least maybe. See, I came up with this tweet on my Twitter¹ account a few minutes ago:

Polishing off produce while pondering and postulating pixels for a purchaser.

And it reminded me of one of the tools I use to increase my vocabulary for writing. I pick a random letter of the alphabet and try to use alliteration to create some silly sentence.² For example, if I would have wrote the tweet³ in normal English I would have said, “I’m eating fruit while thinking about the graphics I’m doing for a client.” Instead, I decided to use alliteration to make it sound funnier and/or more interesting. Alliteration is good for that. But it’s also good for “waxing your word wisdom.”⁴

Sometimes you just don’t have enough words in your head to cover the words needed for creating the alliteration. So you look to a thesaurus.⁵ While doing so, you are naturally increasing your vocabulary.

Try it for yourself. Pick a letter of the alphabet and use it to create alliteration in your comment to this post. You’ll see what I mean.

1. Make sure to follow me: http://twitter.com/Saphrym [«]
2. Hey. I used it again! [«]
3. Not everything must be typed of course. You could use some promotional pens to write it by hand. [«]
4. Which means increasing your vocabulary. [«]
5. I use thesaurus.com. [«]

Posted by Saphrym

3 Things I’m sorry for¹:

1. I’m sorry I haven’t been around much. And no, I’m not stuck in Fallout 3. On the contrary, I haven’t played it since the post I wrote about it. I’ve been busy with the new job, college, and multiple website and graphic clients I’ve been working with. I just haven’t had enough time to work on the blog. Hopefully that will change soon. And hopefully I’ll get more sleep too.²

2. It seems that when I updated a setting in one of my plugins, it decided to mass mail everyone who has commented on my site. I’m very sorry about that and have removed the offending plugin. For those of you with Word press, the plugin is called Comment Relish. If it’s going to spam people, I’m not going to use it³.

3. I’m also sorry about causing an end to a friendship a couple of years ago. I never meant to hurt anyone.

No, I’m not in a 12 step program or anything. But I needed to apologize to my readers and the third one was for me. I’ll be back tomorrow with more posts that might actually be of interest to you guys.⁴ I’ve collected a few pictures I want to share and I have some good news.

1. There may be others, but I’m too worn out to think of them right now. [«]
2. If I wasn’t male, I’d say I have symptoms of fibromyalgia right about now. [«]
3. I hate spam. So I’m very sorry about this one. I’ll do my best to make sure nothing like that happens again. [«]
4. Might is the operative word of course. [«]

Posted by Saphrym