Rantings, mostly…

Today is my wife and I’s three year anniversary.  However, I have a story to tell.  It will illuminate for you why this is the saddest anniversary to date.

My wife’s brother’s wife (no, this is not going to be a funny story) has had problems getting and staying pregnant for the longest time.  This was due to complications she had when she was a child.

So when she became pregnant, and did not immediately miscarry as had previously happened, everyone in the family was ecstatic.  Even myself, despite mine and my wife’s brother’s quarrel.

As of this past Friday, June 29^th, she was almost six months pregnant, the baby was breached, but nonetheless alive and well.

Sadly, something went wrong, labor quickly ensued and she had to give birth to a baby almost four months premature.

Emma Smith, so small her parents decided she didn’t even need a middle name, as her name was already longer than she was…

…not long after her arrival, Emma was dead.

So today, on my wife and I’s three year anniversary, we had to see buried, a niece, a cousin, an only child to a deserving couple.

RIP little angel.  God is calling.

See Emma Smith at our local newspaper for the details.  Condolences may be expressed either here, or at the Bennett-Bertram funeral home Web site.

UPDATE:  Due to the Bennett-Bertram Web site using Publisher (I initially thought FrontPage, or Word) to design the site, it is basically unusable in any browser other than Internet Explorer, so use Internet Explorer if possible.

My daughters and I just returned home from seeing this on its opening night, and I can say this — none of us were disappointed!

This movie had us on the edge of our seats laughing and loving the main character, Remy the entire time.  Mixed with the antics of his brother Emile, and the gruff resolve of his father Django, this movie was a hit all around.

Remy, the main character.  Together, with Remy, you will understand loss, fight through oppression, and learn to embrace your desires and unleash your potential.

Emile, the lovable, rotund older brother of Remy.

Django, the sagely father who’s not too old to learn a lesson himself.

This movie, all 1 hour and 50 minutes of it, took us through hardships, and very poignant moments where we were left to delve inside ourselves and understand the artist that lay within all of us.  The hidden emotion that we so often fail to express to each other was unleashed in waves of eager wisdom, conveying to us the desire and emotion of a kindred spirit, one found, oddly enough, within the confines of an admirable, yet humble rat named Remy.

I highly suggest any lover of Pixar films definitely check out their latest, and longest installment.  Definitely worth the price of admission.

We were also lucky enough to see two other Pixar greats.  The short-film “Lifted,” and also the preview to the movie “WALL-E,” coming 2008.

Make sure to visit Pixar to check out all their great offerings and check out information on all their upcoming releases.  In fact, if you have a nice broadband connection you can go straight to Pixar’s theater and view tons of their work.

All images are the sole property of Disney and/or Pixar.

I guess despite Google’s questionable practices, there are sites that still think it reigns supreme.

IMDb has once again updated its site, and this time it looks a lot like Google’s “Image results for…” on its main page.

I use IMDb probably fifty or more times a week, and personally, this is not a function I need, or want for that matter.

In a related topic, I think Google’s display is fairly biased, actually, I don’t think, I know it’s fairly biased.

For example, search Google for “Mandela.”  (Or even “Nelson Mandela.”)  Now search for “Pamela Anderson.”

Now tell me which one actually showed you an image preview.  Yeah, bias at its best.

He is quite the talented actor, despite his silence all these years.  From Billy Butcherson in “Hocus Pocus,” all the way to the Silver Surfer in “Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer,” Mr. Jones has been delighting us, without us even knowing it.

Make sure to check his website out at The Doug Jones Experience.

How many of his character roles can you name?

Also make sure to check out his independent Silver Surfer film at IMDb.

Oh man, I can hardly tell the difference!

Being wholly unimpressed with the implications of a purely XML backup option for my databases, I sought further options.

Oh wait, you cannot believe how moronic a solution like backing up an RDBMS to XML is?  Neither can some other people.

Firstly, let’s discuss the specifics of an XML backup solution.  Or better yet, let’s look at the size of an exported SQL file in comparison to its XML equivalent.

I chose to backup *all* tables relating to my WordPress installation, excluding Spam Karma’s blacklist, and spam entries logs.  They exceed 80 Megabytes in case you are wondering why.

So, I am left with a gzip’d SQL file containing *EVERYTHING* needed to fully restore my WordPress blog.  That means, all my author’s, subscriber’s information, all their comments, and all of my posts and comments, including categories and related tags.

The file is a whopping 234 Kilobytes.  The XML file is 1,620 Kilobytes (1.6 Megabytes roughly).

To be fair, let’s go ahead and gunzip (decompress) the SQL file.  OK, now we have a file 1,163 Kilobytes (1.1 Megabytes roughly).  Still 457 Kilobytes less than the XML option, that’s almost a half a megabyte!

Here is the kicker though.  The XML export option backs up *only* core WordPress tables.  There is no option to add additional tables, thereby limiting the effectiveness of the XML backup solution.  In fact, I retract calling it a solution.

The SQL file on the other hand, contains all the relevant information to create anew, rebuild, restore, or share with another RDBMS.  Granted you may need to run a conversion on the storage engine to insure compatibility, but this is a trivial item in and of itself.

The XML file contains WordPress-specific code, and I am sure anyone bothering to read this understands the dilemmas raised from proprietary standards.  Also, the XML file is cluttered with markup, whereas the SQL contains relevant field data type and values only.

Granted, this may become a full-fledged backup solution, but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.  XML as a storage solution is simply not a mature technology.  The closest thing I have seen to XML as a backup is Runtime’s DriveImage XML.

1.  Matt Mullenweg/Automattic will most likely never listen to reason and provide options to backup whichever tables the user sees fit.

2.  I wonder which brave soul is going to write the ridiculously regressive “WordPress WXR/XML to SQL” plug-in.  Or other such application: “to Blogger,” “to TypePad,” hell, even “to Habari.”  I bet Skippy would just love that one.

3.  I wonder which slightly less brave soul is going to add to the mess, kiss Mullenweg’s arse, and add the aforementioned items for him.  Seeing as how if it is in development, Mullenweg’s code release cycle will dictate it takes far much more time than it should.

Some of the politics that the egomaniacal “#1 most important Matt in the world” religiously lives by can be seen in this post by Scott Merrill, er… Skippy.

In fact, it is in part due to this “Autocrattic” imperialism that we, as loyal WordPress users have been deprived an ingenious programmer, and author of *several* well known WordPress plug-ins.

As a side note, I have had issues with DreamHost before, but all in all have been more than satisfied with them.  One thing that I can say about them is that they are Nazis when it comes to security risks and updates.

If there is a problem with *anything* to do with any of their One-Click installs, versions of whatever server-side technology, vulnerabilities in kernels… *anything*… they are on it.

Despite having the fanciful XML export feature, DreamHost, by default in it’s WordPress 2.2 One-Click install still offers Skippy’s original wp-db-backup 1.7.

As far as I can tell, the one and only vulnerability to ever be reported (at least publically), and the solitary bug it had, are both patched in the version DreamHost has.

If it’s good enough for DreamHost, it’s definitely good enough for me.

Of course, Skippy has discontinued this, and several other plug-ins, so some may find a better alternative in the new maintainer, Austin Matzko or an entirely separate plug-in altogether.

A note on the first one though, it does not support gzip’ing the resulting SQL as far as I can tell.  That is a definite no-no in my book.  Another reason why I won’t be upgrading.

For years now WestCiv has been an industry leader in teaching web standards and great software that supports that paradigm.

Now they are offering free versions of their self-paced courses.  The current course focuses on CSS1.

I highly suggest to anyone wanting to become familiar with CSS1, and in a standard, tried-and-true way, to check the course out.

http://www.westciv.com/courses/free/index.html

Be quick about it though, because the courses expire.  As of this post they are on week 1, and I have no clue when that “week” ends.