I though you might like to see some pictures I took on my travels.

I took the plunge and upgraded to WordPress v2.5 today.  It only took me about 1/2 hour and it went pretty smooth.  I used the Automatic WordPress Upgraded plugin.  It worked well until it got to the point where it needed to reactivate all the plugins.  It asked me to login again and then asked if I was sure I wanted to do this. I said yes but nothing happened and I had to reactive my plugins manually.  The backend to v2.5 is totally different so it took me a minute to find my way around.  Everything seams to be working.

Now I just have to figure out how to enable the new built in gallery.

It’s Official, Feb 19th, 2008 is the official day that HD-DVD Dead. Check out this article on Extreme Tech. Or this article or the official Toshiba Announcement. I am happy the HD Format war is over, now everyone can get on board with Blu-Ray and hopefully the video store will start stocking more HD movies. I have a PS3 so I have been watching movies on Blu-Ray for a while and I did not buy a HD-DVD player so I guess I got lucky. Paramount and Universal Studios also announced today that it will now start preparing titles for Blu-Ray.

I have also decided to try out the “WP Super Cache” plugin instead of my custom WP-Cache plugin. I downloaded the WP-Super-Cache v0.5.4 and made the GoDaddy wordpress fix from site where I found the GoDaddy Fix.  So far I have not been getting any 500 Server Errors.  Let me know if you have a problem with the site and I will switch it back to my Custom WP-Cache plugin.  You can get the WP-Super-Cache Plugin here.

Update: I am currently using v0.9.8 and it works great with no need to edit it.  Just install and activate and it works great.

I just updated the site to use the latest version of WordPress v2.3.2,  I also updated several of the plugins.

I have been playing the MMORPG called Vanguard: Saga of Heroes since beta. But a few months ago I canceled my subscription and stopped playing. On Dec. 18th, 2007 SOE decided to reactivate everyone’s account for a free month if you were inactive since Oct 1, 2007. I am glad I came back to the game, SOE has made great changes (Mostly Fixes) to the game. There are a lot more people playing now and they are have a Christmas event in the game so it is all decorated and you get free presents. The city of Khal has also go a makeover and the performance is much better now. The performance in general for the entire game is much better, they have fixed a ton of memory leaks and bugs. At launch the game would use 95% of my 2 Gigs of ram but now usually uses around 70% and run a lot smoother. I crash a lot less often and I am able to run with the graphics turned up on max and still get a decent framerate on my single Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX. The game still looks great and now performs great. My Guild is more active again and SOE is giving everyone a 50% XP bonus and free flying Reindeer for the Holidays. I have been able to go from level 23 to level 29 in about a week. Things are looking much better for Vanguard. If you have not checked it out recently then you should give it a try or retry if you left.

This recipe takes about 10 minutes to prepare and 40 minutes to cook. Serves 3 – 4.

Ingredients:

1/2	Medium Yellow Pepper
1/2	Medium Green Pepper
1 cup	Instant Rice
1 cup	Water
3/4 cup	Apple Juice
	Shake ‘n Bake Pork – Crispy
1 kg	Pork Loin Chops

Pre-Heat the Oven to 400°F

Add 1 cup water, 3/4 cup Apple Juice and 1 cup Instant Rice to 8″ x 11″ 2 L (Or similar size) baking dish. Cut 1/2 of a Yellow Pepper and 1/2 of a Green Pepper into 1″ pieces and distribute evenly through the mixture.

Remove the bones from the Pork Chops, I use scissors to make this easier. Coat the Pork Chops with Shake ‘n Bake – Pork flavor – Crispy. I don’t use the plastic bags that come with the Shake ‘n Bake as I find it a waste to use a whole package and it makes a mess. Instead I pour some Shake ‘n Bake onto a plate and one by one press each side of the Pork Chop into it to coat both sides and the edges. Add more Shake ‘n Bake to the plate as needed. Place the Port Chops on top of the rice and peppers mixture as you coat them. You should have covered the entire rice mixture when you are done. You will most likely have to overlap the Pork Chops a little.

Bake for 40 Minutes at 400°F.

I have decided to share with you some pictures that I have taken during my travels.  You can click on the on the Photography link above or click here.  I hope you enjoy them.

Today I had an interesting afternoon thanks to GoDaddy and WordPress. I have been working with my blog a lot over the past few days and I noticed that I was getting a lot of “Error 500 – Internal server error” messages. I was getting this error about 50% of the time. I went to my Control Panel on the GoDaddy site and turned on Error Logging. The only thing the Error Log was showing was a few lines that said ‘mod_rewrite: maximum number of internal redirects reached. Assuming configuration error. Use ‘RewriteOptions MaxRedirects’ to increase the limit if necessary.’

From this error messages I assumed the problem was being caused by mod_rewrite but after several hours of playing with it and spending 1/2 hour on the phone with GoDaddy Tech Support, I discovered that it was not to culprit.

After doing much searching on the Internet I stumbled upon a forum post talking about the same problem. I discovered that the problem was not with mod_rewrite but was instead with the WP-Cache plugin that I had installed in WordPress. There seams to be some kind of compatibility problem with GoDaddy and WordPress with the WP-Cache plugin enabled. Disabling the plugin got rid of the 500 Internal server error messages.

I did not want to get rid of the WP-Cache plugin because it did speed up my site so I decided to see if anyone had a work around and I found a great blog post that told me how to fix it. The post is at Using WP-Cache on GoDaddy (500 Error).

I found thinkdj’s post over at Blogulate that has a GZIP version of WP-Cache that will work with GZIP enabled so I started with that version and added the GoDaddy fix. I took it a little further and found some optimization for WP-Cache as well. I have it fully working on GoDaddy now with no more 500 Internal Server Error messages. To save you all a lot of work I have created a .zip file containing the fixes and optimization to WP-Cache. Just download wp-cache.zip and unzip it into your wp-content/plugins directory. Your site should be faster and error free. I have only tested it on GoDaddy so I don’t know if it will work on other hosts.

Recommendation:  Remove WP-Cache and Install WP-SuperCache.  It works much better, you don’t need to edit it, it is updated regularly and does not cause any problems with GoDaddy.

Refrences:
Original GoDaddy Fix site
Original GZIP Version of WP-Cache
Original Speed Optimization site

This is a recipe I make alot. It is easy to make and only takes about 15 minutes and serves 2.

Ingredients:

Cooking Tip: Keep a pair of scissors in the kitchen to cut up food. It requires less counter space and makes it a lot easier and faster for smaller jobs.

In a large frying pan or wok, add 1 tsp cooking oil and set to med heat.
Take 1 Medium Size Red Pepper and cut it into small pieces about 1″ long (2.5cm) by 1/8″ thick (3mm).
Cut 2 Boneless / Skinless Chicken Breasts into small pieces about 3/4″ (2 cm) pieces. Add to frying pan along with Red Peppers. Cook for about 5 minutes or until you cannot see any pink from the chicken, stirring occasionally.
Cut 6 Medium Size White Mushroom into slices about 1/4″ (5mm) slices (I do this while waiting for chicken to cook) and add to Chicken and Red Peppers. Cook for an additional 10 minutes or until the water is almost all gone from the pan.
Add 1 tbsp of Classico Basil Pesto sauce to mixture and stir until it is evenly coated. Add 1/3 cup Classico Four Cheese Alfredo to mixture and still until evenly coated. Simmer for one minute more and server over white rice.

Enjoy.