Surprisingly, it’s still chugging along without any complaints.  Most of the thanks for that goes to DreamHost’s default nginx config and easy to follow tutorial tho.

All I really needed to do to get it going was:

• Select the server from the Private Server configuration menu in the DreamHost web panel.
• Wait for a configuration update to run on the server.
• Flush my local DNS cache.
• Check the HTTP headers to verify I was seeing the right server.
• Comment out a few conflicting mod_rewrite rules from .htaccess.
• Copy and paste new rules into my personal site config file.

And while that might seem like that list had a bunch of stuff in it, I can honestly say that it took no more than 30 minutes to make those changes.

The only weird thing that has happened so far is that it had a weird memory spike last night — but that dropped off this morning for no discernible reason.  Since everything has been level after that, I guess I’ll have to keep an eye on my graphs and make sure it’s not a nightly thing…

P.S. Since I’ve never been one to leave “good enough” alone, I’m going to keep making tweaks (and maybe start piling on a few more active sites) to see what nginx can do. Expect more nerdy updates on this eventually.

• The Hold Steady
• LCD Soundsystem
• The xx
• Tokyo Police Club
• The Pixies
• Eels

Who’s on your “must see” list this year?

In order to put the past behind us tho, I need to address what happened. So that’s the motivation behind this post.

Most of you don’t know the whole story of Sarah and I. And that’s either because I haven’t said anything about it or because I’ve only relayed half-truths or outright lies. If you knew the truth, I’m sure you may not have a high opinion of me. In fact, writing it out makes me feel pretty awful about the things that I’ve done.

So in order to set everyone straight, I’ll just say that if you’ve heard me say something disparaging about Sarah, forget it. Over the past four years, she’s always been a constant presence in my life. And she’s been willing to accept me back no matter how hard I’ve pushed her away.

I’d like to say that I didn’t push very hard, but that wouldn’t be true at all. I couldn’t commit to us for three out of those four years — and because of that, this last year has been hard. But we’ve made long strides. Hopefully, we’ll continue to make them.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’m sorry for the things I’ve done. And my only regret is not realizing all of the hurtful things I was doing sooner.

The next four years will be nothing like the last four tho. We’re going to build a life. A family. A home. Getting to do that with my best friend — and the most beautiful girl in the whole world — is all I could have ever asked for.

The only thing that makes me happier than knowing that this exists is knowing that it should be available for download in January of 2010. Anyone have any suggestions for good NES emulators for Linux?

I totally missed this video when it made the rounds months ago — but after watching it, I think Christopher R. Weingarten is my new hero. Well, maybe not my hero. But at least he’s my favorite music critic now.

If topics like crowdsourcing and its effects on criticism interest you at all, the video above is totally worth ten minutes of your time.

An (apparently) unnecessary reinstall of Ubuntu 9.10 allowed me to clean up my netbook a bit. Fortunately, the fresh install was a snap. All I had to do was copy the few files I wanted to keep into my Dropbox, wait for it to update and reinstall from my USB keychain drive with impunity.

While it’s still no OS X — sorry Linux nerds — I’m really enjoying the interface refinements and bits of polish. I can’t wait to see what improvements 10.04 will bring.

P.S. The totally awesome wallpaper is from kozyndan. If you like it, go downolad it.

Fortunately, running your already approved comments thru Akismet is pretty easy.  Well, that might be a bit disingenuous. It’s easy for the geeky types that are comfortable with the MySQL command line and raw queries.  So if you manage to fall into that category, feel free to give this a go…

1. Fire up your favorite MySQL management tool and feed the following command to your WordPress database:
   update wp_comments set comment_approved=’0′ where comment_approved=’1′;
   This tells WordPress to take any comment already flagged as “approved” and set it to “pending”.
2. Visit “Comments” in your WordPress dashboard.  You should notice that you’ve got a bunch of comments under “Pending”.
3. So long as you have Akismet installed, you should have a button marked “Check for Spam”.  Click it.
4. This step is going to require some patience.  You’ll need to wait while Akismet does its thing.  This means chilling out while watching your browser’s “loading” animation spin for a little bit.
   1. If you have a lot of comments — and we’re talking about thousands — you might run into your server’s PHP execution timeout. You’ll know this has happened when you see either a 404 or aren’t redirected back to the “Comments” page.  Don’t panic.
   2. If you run into a timeout, simply press “Back” in your browser and click “Check for Spam” again.  When the number of comments listed under “Pending” stops decreasing, you’re really close to being done!
5. Go back to the MySQL management tool you used in step one and give it one last command:
   update wp_comments set comment_approved=’1′ where comment_approved=’0′;
   This takes the “pending” comments and sets them back to “approved”.
6. Congratulations!  Your comments are now much tidier and you’ve helped stamp out the spammers who’ve gotten past your defenses.  Since your copy of Akismet has just done a bunch of heavy lifting, you might want to consider giving it a bit of a rest by implementing something like Hashcash as your first line of defense. When it comes to fighting spam, they’re a great combination.

If I can hack together a way to work around the PHP execution timeout issue, I’ll do my best to make this into a simple to use plugin.  Since I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, I’d prefer it if the lazyweb could beat me to getting that done.  Any takers?

The server at Magic requires a username and password.

Well my friend, you’ve been hacked.  Apparently this has something to do with the cross-site scripting (XSS) bug addressed with the WordPress 2.8.2 and 2.8.3 updates.

I’ve uncreatively dubbed this little baddie “The Magic Hack” and there appears to be a simple way to clear it up.  As it stands, the only file that I’ve seen get affected by this is in “wp-includes/vars.php”.  So if your copy of that file looks nothing like the one available over in the WordPress subversion repository, replace yours with a fresh copy, stat.

In fact, it’d probably be a better idea to upgrade your blog to the most recent version of WordPress using the extended upgrade instructions over on the WordPress Codex.  So yeah, do that instead.

Oh, and if you’re still seeing that prompt after updating “wp-includes/vars.php”, let me know and I’ll update the post when I dig up some more info.

Update: Some people are seeing the hack showing up outside of “wp-includes/vars.php”. If you have SSH access to your server, you should be able to pick out the infected files rather quickly by doing a recursive grep from your site’s root directory:

grep -r -l gzinflate .

This will show you just the filenames where the string “gzinflate” is found. If you want to see the code that grep finds — to provide yourself with a little context — just leave the “-l” switch off of the command.

Should you not have SSH access to the server where your copy of WordPress is installed, I suggest writing your host’s support team. Any host worth their salt wouldn’t mind running the command above and giving you the results.

And if you host your WordPress sites in a Windows based server environment — which doesn’t normally allow for commands like grep — do yourself a favor and go get a real host… ;)

Well, so long as you’re running an OS that installs Helvetica by default, that is.  Otherwise it defaults to (gag) Arial.  Still, sans-serifs FTW!

So feel free to kick the tires a bit.  And let me know if you notice anything weird.

Squee! My all-time favorite multiplayer FPS is getting a sequel! And melee weapons! This has managed to make me so excited that I can’t seem to stop using exclamation points!

Oh. Wait. Yes I can. *whew* That was a close one. Last time I got stuck like that it took me a week to snap out of it.

I’m still pretty psyched tho. November 17th can’t come soon enough…

Actually, let’s not shit ourselves — it’ll probably be here before you realize it. So if you pre-order the Xbox 360 version on Amazon now and add me on Xbox Live, we’ll be able to kill zombies without having to deal with the condescending twats they seem to employ behind the counter at Gamestop.

P.S. Kotaku’s posted a poster image for one of the new campaigns:

P.P.S. It looks like I found a new use for “Is it out yet?”… ;)

P.P.P.S. According to Destructioid, the AI Director is getting a serious set of upgrades:

We’re also going to see a deeper co-op mode and an advanced AI Director which will now be able to change the weather, world objects and pathways in addition to changing the enemy population.

Weather?! Adaptive pathways?! Gah! I need to develop a time machine, stat!