The Blog of Adam Patten http://adampatten.com Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:49:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.1 en Looking For a Place to Live http://adampatten.com/2008/03/12/looking-for-a-place-to-live/ http://adampatten.com/2008/03/12/looking-for-a-place-to-live/#comments Thu, 13 Mar 2008 04:32:37 +0000 Adam Patten http://adampatten.com/2008/03/12/looking-for-a-place-to-live/ SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Looking For a Place to Live", url: "http://adampatten.com/2008/03/12/looking-for-a-place-to-live/" }); ]]> I will be moving soon and I need to find a place to live in PB so I’ve been apartment hunting. Today I went looking for a place with my future roommate and we found a decent place that is a little beat up. I figured with with some paint, a new carpet and a little TLC could be a great place. The Realtor lady assured us that Cal-Prop, the property management company, would be fixing it up. I thought it would be good to move into a place with all these new things, but the future roomy said she heard that Cal-Prop can be shady and usually keeps your whole security deposit when you move out. I didn’t like the sound of that! I understand that. I understand there are going to be times when tenants trash their places, especially in PB, and property management will keep some or most of the deposit, but not the whole deposit all the time. I figured I would check into the claims of Cal-Prop being a bad property manager when I got home, and it looks like they are indeed shady. I only found three different sites reviewing Cal-Prop, but none of them were good. Those bad reviews were enough for me to skip this place and keep looking, I’d rather save myself from headaches that I don’t need. Anyone else have a bad experience with Cal-Prop?

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]]> http://adampatten.com/2008/03/12/looking-for-a-place-to-live/feed/ Link Lovin’ http://adampatten.com/2008/03/10/link-lovin/ http://adampatten.com/2008/03/10/link-lovin/#comments Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:59:16 +0000 Adam Patten http://adampatten.com/2008/03/10/link-lovin/ SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Link Lovin’", url: "http://adampatten.com/2008/03/10/link-lovin/" }); ]]> Recently my traffic has sky rocketed when Chris linked to my site. I saw an increase from my normal one visitor to a whopping 5! With all this link love I might even move up to a Page Rank of 2!

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]]> http://adampatten.com/2008/03/10/link-lovin/feed/ “Almost Pretty” URLs with WordPress http://adampatten.com/2008/01/29/almost-pretty-urls-with-wordpress/ http://adampatten.com/2008/01/29/almost-pretty-urls-with-wordpress/#comments Wed, 30 Jan 2008 05:52:31 +0000 Adam Patten http://adampatten.com/2008/01/29/almost-pretty-urls-with-wordpress/ SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "“Almost Pretty” URLs with WordPress", url: "http://adampatten.com/2008/01/29/almost-pretty-urls-with-wordpress/" }); ]]> If this isn’t a case of RTFM, then I don’t know what is. I set up my friends blog back in October using WordPress and wanted to enable pretty URLs. Unfortunatly, he chose Yahoo! as his host and they don’t allow access to the .htacess file. I thought there was no way to do it since I couldn’t use mod_rewrite. However, if I had just read the whole permalink article on the WordPress Codex, I would have realized that I could have “almost pretty” URLs by just adding “index.php” in front of the structure and let WordPress use a little PATHINFO magic.

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]]> http://adampatten.com/2008/01/29/almost-pretty-urls-with-wordpress/feed/ Creepy Face Photo Editing http://adampatten.com/2008/01/16/creepy-face-photo-editing/ http://adampatten.com/2008/01/16/creepy-face-photo-editing/#comments Thu, 17 Jan 2008 05:30:18 +0000 Adam Patten http://adampatten.com/2008/01/16/creepy-face-photo-editing/ SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Creepy Face Photo Editing", url: "http://adampatten.com/2008/01/16/creepy-face-photo-editing/" }); ]]> Ok, you may think this post is kind of creepy, but hey its not like I have real visitors to this site so what the heck. Jon and Joey both did this and I think its pretty funny so here are the mirrored sides of my face.

Face mirroring

I kinda like the strange tube that is around my neck on the left side, but the right side is way skinnier, either way my hair is out of control in both(which is the same in a regular picture) so I like ‘em.

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]]> http://adampatten.com/2008/01/16/creepy-face-photo-editing/feed/ Upgraded WordPress, Finally! http://adampatten.com/2007/12/16/upgraded-wordpress-finally/ http://adampatten.com/2007/12/16/upgraded-wordpress-finally/#comments Sun, 16 Dec 2007 22:05:36 +0000 Adam Patten http://adampatten.com/2007/12/16/upgraded-wordpress-finally/ SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Upgraded WordPress, Finally!", url: "http://adampatten.com/2007/12/16/upgraded-wordpress-finally/" }); ]]> Well I finally upgraded my WordPress install to the latest version. I had attempted to do this about a month ago, but got sidetracked for some reason. The overall process was painless, it took me under 30 minutes to backup my database, upload the new files and update all of my plugins. The one thing I realized is that if you hard coded any of your plugins to your theme, you should use function_exists in the event you disable them or upgrade the plugin and the function no longer exists.

Plugins I use

Since I just upgraded them all I figure I might as well let you know which plugins I use on this blog.

Theme

Now I just need to create a custom theme for this site. The current theme I have was meant to be temporary, but I’ve slacked big time and it is any but. I finally understand em based layouts because of the great article on A List Apart by Richard Rutter, so hopefully I’ll get it done sometime in 2008.

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]]> http://adampatten.com/2007/12/16/upgraded-wordpress-finally/feed/ NCAA Football and the BCS http://adampatten.com/2007/12/01/ncaa-football-and-the-bcs/ http://adampatten.com/2007/12/01/ncaa-football-and-the-bcs/#comments Sun, 02 Dec 2007 04:28:08 +0000 Adam Patten http://adampatten.com/2007/12/01/ncaa-football-and-the-bcs/ SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "NCAA Football and the BCS", url: "http://adampatten.com/2007/12/01/ncaa-football-and-the-bcs/" }); ]]> I run the website thelivefeed.net for a few of my friends who are writers, and it looks like Andy might being having a change of heart on his NCAA football playoff stance tomorrow depending if his Georgia Bulldogs are in the national champion ship game or not. All I know is that this season is crazy and I’m just hoping that Clemson, my school, some how sneaks into a BSC bowl. Lets go UW!

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]]> http://adampatten.com/2007/12/01/ncaa-football-and-the-bcs/feed/ San Diego Ablaze http://adampatten.com/2007/10/23/san-diego-ablaze/ http://adampatten.com/2007/10/23/san-diego-ablaze/#comments Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:41:40 +0000 Adam Patten http://adampatten.com/2007/10/23/san-diego-ablaze/ SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "San Diego Ablaze", url: "http://adampatten.com/2007/10/23/san-diego-ablaze/" }); ]]> Southern California WildfiresCurrently there are huge wildfires burning where I live, San Diego County, but I am one of the lucky ones and live out of harms way. Right now reports are that an estimated 245,000 acres have burned and 1,200 homes destroyed. Previously small wildfires have popped up since I’ve lived in San Diego, but this one is HUGE! The last big fire was the Cedar Fire back in 2003 and these fires have already matched the damage from that one, without signs of letting up.

Staying Up to Date Online

With everyone in San Diego looking for information on these fires the local news outlets have had their websites slammed with traffic. CBS and KPBS had to offer up stripped down versions of there homepages to handle all the traffic(KPBS has recovered and is back to normal). KPBS has done a great job providing the public with up to date information. They have used Google maps to keep track of burn areas, evacuation areas, evacuation centers, and road closings. They have used twitter to post updates which you can get via text message, instant message or in your rss feed reader. Also, their transmitter on Mt. Miguel is having problems due to the fire but they got help from FM 94.9 and are now broadcasting there. Cheers to KPBS for providing great up to date information for the public during this tough time. Jeers to sdcountyemergency.com and 211sandiego.org for either being down or not providing useful information when they are up.

San Diego, Staying Classy

Stay Classy SDReports are that the local support for those who have been displaced from or lost their homes has been tremendous. People and businesses have been dropping off supplies and lending a hand at all the evacuation centers and have definitely helped to easy the burden of the people who are in need. Glad to hear of all the goodwill.
Update: There is a group on flickr for photos of the October 2007 San Diego Wildfires so if you have any photos of your own join the group and submit them or just see the photos that others have posted already.

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]]> http://adampatten.com/2007/10/23/san-diego-ablaze/feed/ Just Joined Flickr http://adampatten.com/2007/08/12/just-joined-flickr/ http://adampatten.com/2007/08/12/just-joined-flickr/#comments Mon, 13 Aug 2007 01:16:36 +0000 Adam Patten http://adampatten.com/2007/08/12/just-joined-flickr/ SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Just Joined Flickr", url: "http://adampatten.com/2007/08/12/just-joined-flickr/" }); ]]> So I don’t know what took me so long to sign up with flickr, but I finally did today. At first glance I’m pretty happy. All the controls are intuative and its really easy to figure everthing out so I’m enjoying it. I’ve uploaded one set of photos and set them as private, I’m not sure how I feel about sharing them with everyone just yet, and shared them with a few friends. The only draw back to this is that they have to create an account to view them. It might be nice to send them to a URL that you could set to expire in a certain period of time. I don’t really need high level security on my photos, but I just don’t like them out there for Google and Yahoo! to find and show to everyone. So far flickr gets two thumbs up!

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]]> http://adampatten.com/2007/08/12/just-joined-flickr/feed/ Sharing Easily on the Web with a Wiki http://adampatten.com/2007/07/26/sharing-easily-on-the-web-with-a-wiki/ http://adampatten.com/2007/07/26/sharing-easily-on-the-web-with-a-wiki/#comments Fri, 27 Jul 2007 06:42:19 +0000 Adam Patten http://adampatten.com/2007/07/26/sharing-easily-on-the-web-with-a-wiki/ SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Sharing Easily on the Web with a Wiki", url: "http://adampatten.com/2007/07/26/sharing-easily-on-the-web-with-a-wiki/" }); ]]> Recently I have been playing around with MediaWiki, and I must say the whole idea of a wiki is really exciting to me. Obviously Wikis are nothing new, millions of people use Wikipedia everyday including myself. I never contributed to Wikipedia so I was never a part of the community and did not have a full understanding of how powerful a wiki can be. I must say at the early stages of using MediaWiki I’m really excited to be working with a wiki on a regular basis. Stripping away all the bells and whistles of tradition website and delivering quality content for everyone by everyone is really what the web is all about, and wikis do a great job at that. It is exciting to see non web geeks contributing and sharing information that would never make its way out in the open if it weren’t for software like wikis. Part of the whole reason I enjoy working on the web is the community of people who openly share information and are willing to help people they have never met and it’s nice to see non geeks around me entering the community as well. Just wanted to share what is exciting me lately and if you haven’t contributed to a wiki yet I suggest you go out and do it. There are plenty to choose from include the ever popular, Wikipedia.

While doing some hunting around for information on wikis I came across these funny pictures from Flickr that you may enjoy.

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]]> http://adampatten.com/2007/07/26/sharing-easily-on-the-web-with-a-wiki/feed/ Choosing the URL structure for your site http://adampatten.com/2007/06/07/choosing-url-structure/ http://adampatten.com/2007/06/07/choosing-url-structure/#comments Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:54:46 +0000 Adam Patten http://adampatten.com/2007/06/07/google-search-tips-for-blogs/ SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Choosing the URL structure for your site", url: "http://adampatten.com/2007/06/07/choosing-url-structure/" }); ]]> Today I noticed a nice feature of having a URL structure for your site based on the date (adampatten.com/2007/06/08/). When I’m looking for something on a particular site I typically use Google’s site search, its usually better than most built in searches and it I don’t have to hunt around on the site for the search form. Well today I wanted to find something on Matt Mullenweg’s site, but he has been blogging for so long that it returned lots of results and I wanted results from recent posts so I just narrowed my search using his URL structure. So not only does the URL date structure allow users to instantly know when the post was made by the URL, go directly to an archive for the day, month, or year based on the URL, it also allows users easy ways to search your site using external search engines. Too bad I lacked this knowledge when I created the URL structure for this site. But I went ahead and corrected this mistake and updated the URL structure for this site. Since there aren’t any inbound links and virtual no PR I’m not really worried about the SEO/usability issues. So learn from my mistake and use those dates in your URL structure.

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