http://www.ploofle.com Geekery, Life, Travel, Bits, and Mini-Didactics Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:39:44 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I need to internalize this one for when I reintegrate into American society... http://www.ploofle.com/2008/08/27/picture-of-the-day/ ..there is an unseasonable late (as in, two seasons late) dust storm that has made the sky parchment-colored and reduced visibility to about 500 feet.  Tar paper seems to be flapping around, and I suspect I won't go buy meat today, as it'll be quite gritty. http://www.ploofle.com/2008/08/24/also-right-now/ Despite all the random tech postings, I actually still reside in Mongolia and it's high time I actually talk about that for once. The weather's cooling down for real now - overnight I close my apartment window and use my fleece blanket, and yesterday I actually was a little chilled in ... http://www.ploofle.com/2008/08/24/back-to-mongolia/ I did some fairly major overhauling with this last version and added in extra settings/checks that should make it solid until a suitably late version of wordpress comes out and breaks it again.  Changes from 2.0 to 3.0 include: Support for PostgreSQL and MSSQL (with the installation of MDB2 PEAR packages ... http://www.ploofle.com/2008/08/20/final-major-update-for-ext_db_auth-plugin/ After hand-formatting the first 50 pages or so of the Project Gutenberg version of "1001 Nights" I came across this neat project called Gutenmark that takes the plaintext and converts it into either html or LaTex-formatted documents for easier reading.  I'm downloading LaTex now to edit said document, as that's ... http://www.ploofle.com/2008/08/19/project-gutenberg-continued/ I hope it will be called "Interrobang" ... Unfortunately, I just googled this and found out there are already several bands with variants on this name.  So I have to either destroy them all, or resign myself to joining a "a seven piece ska band from the South Shore in Massachusetts".  Perhaps ... http://www.ploofle.com/2008/08/17/whenif-im-in-a-band/ I read this and have to admit, beyond being studiously edified, was slightly amused at the approach.  A teaser: "[they] would attack random travelers on the road, while shouting 'Laudes Deo!' ('Praise the Lord!)' in Latin." Sounds like a good enemy for a RPG. http://www.ploofle.com/2008/08/14/beating-with-israelites/ Just that.  It works from what I can tell with Wordpress 2.5 and higher; the code's been tightened up, besides.  Download it at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/external-database-authentication/ http://www.ploofle.com/2008/08/14/ext_db_auth-updated/ NYTimes just makes it more legit: Maine toddler uninjured after three - story fall. And I just made my first successful brioche loaf! It's damn tasty... http://www.ploofle.com/2008/08/13/shades-of-robert-jordan/ (updated!) So, based on the new things I've found, I think I could pretty easily migrate to another OS except for a small partition for games.  Slowly unsuckaging myself for the tentacles that are Microsoft...open source is finally fully working out for me! Work (office basics) OpenOffice - Does word, powerpoint, excel-like things. ... http://www.ploofle.com/2008/08/12/software-list/