Upgrade

Or, at least that’s what I’m telling myself. I’m in the middle of trying to convert all of my WordPress sites into a single Multi-User install. If it works, this means that I will only have to upgrade and patch a single set of plugins and code and all of my sites will automatically be up to date.

Great for security, and certainly a plus for this lazy admin. Getting there, however, is another story. The documentation makes it seem like a simple act of exporting, tweaking some settings, and importing. I am finding that a lot of things don’t come across with an export though, and a lot of hand tweaking is required to get things to look right.

So, this blog will look a bit strange and some elements may be disappearing and reappearing as I enable things and get it all settled. Then I’ll start moving over the other sites if I’m convinced it won’t break anything.

I’ll update here as things progress

[Update 12/17/2010]

It’s been awhile since I’ve worked on this project. I successfully moved two blogs into the MU setup and they’re running great. I tried to move a podcast over, but the episodes didn’t want to play. I think it had to do with caching but ran out of time to test. I’ve got one more standard blog to move into the MU setup, then work on the podcasts.

[Update 12/20/2010]

I was successful in integrating a podcast. I had to manually touch every post for the mp3 files to link correctly, so it took awhile, but in the end everything seems to be working normally. For the next podcast I may try doing a search/replace within the SQL database dump and see if that works without having to touch every post. New posts automatically worked without issue, it was just the old episodes.

Free Acoustic Show Thursday, Oct 7th

This acoustic show at Fireflies in Arlington, VA will be similar to our appearance at Village Fest. I haven’t been to Fireflies so I’m not sure of the layout. It looks like a nice restaurant/bar so I’m assuming it is kid-friendly.

They boast “50 – 70 bottled and 7 draft American Microbrews” and “15 premium wines all available by the glass” so this will definitely be a place you can get your #Beerquest on!

Where: Fireflies Del Ray
1501 Mt Vernon Ave
Alexandria, Virginia 22301
(703) 548-7200

When: Thursday October 7, 2010 at 8:00pm
Further Info: Fireflies website – warning, it’s an all Flash site

Free Acoustic Show Saturday, Oct 2nd

This Saturday, October 2nd we will be playing at the 2010 Village Fest in Ashburn Virginia! We’ll be giving an acoustic performance with Phil, Dennis and myself bringing some slightly different versions of our songs.

This is a family friendly event and totally free – so come on down. Did I mention we’ll be playing in the beer garden?

Where: The Ashburn Village Sports Pavilion in the “Beer Garden”
20585 Ashburn Village Blvd
Ashburn, VA 20147

When: We’ll start playing at 6:00pm, Saturday October 2, 2010
(Village Fest itself runs Friday and Saturday with rides, rock wall, and full bands on main stage)

Further Info: Village Fest info at:

Apps I Can’t Live Without

A lot of friends have been buying Android devices. Naturally, one of the first things people want to know is “what is the best app to install?” This is an open question, of course. The answer depends on what you are looking to do and since there are so many apps out there, it owes a lot to personal preference.

I’ve sent e-mails to some friends with lists of applications that I like. I realized that it would be a lot more efficient to write up a blog post of what my favorite apps are and just point people to it.

Therefore, below are the “Apps I Can’t Live Without”. Well, mostly. I’ve divided them up into a couple different categories. One list of must-have apps. A list of games I enjoy. A list of techie apps that most people won’t be interested in. Finally a list of apps that I could live without, but are way cool – and lets face it, today’s devices have so much storage space that there really isn’t a reason NOT to install an app and try it out! All of the apps on these lists are completely free, ad supported, or have “lite” versions available.

I do intend to update this list from time to time. I am still rocking a hacked and modified T-Mobile G1, but with our contract coming up at the end of October I hope to upgrade to the new hotness. Some applications that don’t run well (or at all) on my current phone will get a good testing once I have a more capable device. – new hotness has been achieved: Viv and I now have the beautiful Droid X on Verizon. I can’t say enough good things about this device.. I’m in love with Android all over again!

Also, when I get time I’ll add in links or QRCodes to the apps so that they are easier to find and install.

One final note for people new to Android: unlike other devices Android has a full refund policy. You can get a refund for ANY app that you install if you don’t like it as long as you uninstall it within the first 24 hours

Random Acts of Chooch