Category Archives: Technology

Spellcheck on Tests in Oregon and Thoughts on Effect of Technology in Daily Life

This was a comment in response to a Gizmodo Post:

Depresing Newz: Spelcheking During Exams Now OoKay Wit Oragan Schols

Not sure if they have allowed me to comment there yet, they say you have to audition but I do not see anywhere to audition! Oh well, hopefully it will be up there sometime.

If they teach spelling before a test then it doesn’t really matter if they can use spellcheck on the test, it just gives kids a greater of getting that important and state required “A” to pass their class.

Using spellcheck allows the school system to pass along the majority of kids who don’t really care about their education.

Cyberelitism and Social Networking Success

This was in response to an blog entitled: How building your online social network may affect your offline social life, which was based on an article study about Cyberoptimism and Cyberpessimism.

As with anything else in “business” or “life”, it all comes down to strategy. Offline or online, building relationships one “friend” at a time or one “business card” at a time is really much the same thing. It all depends on what you are going to do with the relationships you maintain. It matters not if you are a Cyberoptimist, or cyberpessimist, either way, you are social or you are not, being social is knowing how to take the next step beyond small talk and introduction (aka. friending).

Ask anyone, having too many friends offline is time consuming, they demand your time, your attention and your loyalty. The difference is that online friends demand less of this attention and you can have more of them. The quality is not there, but because we are finite beings with finite time and requiring immense amounts of it for real business, those that aren’t part of your “life” or “business” strategy will always come last, offline or online.

SMX a Huge Success! Great Speakers Vendors and Networking

Just got back from SMX East, which is still going on for those able to afford/take the day long workshops. For me it was a huge success. I went up with only an EXPO+ Pass, (the Free One) and ended up enjoying a lot more than I should have I’ll keep the details secret as not to oust anyone but I thoroughly enjoyed Tuesdays presentations and the AfterDark Party especially!

I had the pleasure of meeting the very kind and friendly Emily Breeze and Karen DeWeese, of which I thoroughly impressed with my Dance Dance Revolution Skillz in the Mars 2112 Arcade. I also had a wonderful conversation about all sorts of things including tech, academia, religion, etc. with the charming Kendra Jaros.  Had a most interesting and insightful conversation with Brian Cosgrove after teaching him how to play DDR. Later Roger from MartiniBuster took me across the street where I had a fun time with Brian Piepgrass and his hilarious five toed shoes at a restaurant where I also met Greg Boser and his wife, who will be running the BlueGlass SEO conference in Fort Lauderdale very soon, not too far from my office!

WordPress Server Migration Gone Bad

Looks like my ever advancing PHP experience and knowledge is coming in handy. I was able to help a major entertainment news website: http://www.bloginity.com, get back on its feet.

They use Godaddy, *shudder* and moved from a dedicated virtual, to a dedicated server. Sure, its cheap, but you get what you pay for. The migration did not go smooth ,Godaddy screwed them over. They had tons of problems. Godaddy should stick to domain names, of which they are, imho, the best to use.

WordPress Problem: PHP mktime() Not Working/Broken – Wrong Timezone

Quick note for WordPress developers, this one had me scratching my head.

If you use mktime() in your plugin code you will notice the timezone will always reflect GMT. There is a reason for this.

Notice that in settings, WordPress asks you for your locale. It then tells you what the time is in GMT and then what the new locale time is. Somehow, WordPress overrides php.ini, system time, etc and thinks its GMT when using mktime(). You cant change it anywhere, not in .htaccess ,nothing. It’s probably embedded deep within the core of wordpress somewhere, and has something to do with plugin functions called within the Loop.

Anyways, how do we get the current linux timestamp that mktime() normally so easily creates for us? Use the following wordpress function:

current_time(“timestamp”);

This will give you your standard linux timestamp. It also has the ability to create a mysql timestamp using the format:

current_time(“mysql”);

Test it out, but don’t try using a separate .php to test as mktime() works fine outside of the Loop.

Hope this helps!!