Teh Slows – I Haz Them.

Halloo internets!!  I have a new theme, whattya think?

Yeah.  I know.

It’s slow.

S    L    O    O    O    O    O   W.

I can’t even say slow slow enough to fully capture just how slow my blog loads now.

No fears tho!  Thanks to the fabulous Jason Grigsby and his talk  from last year’s WordCamp Portland ,  “Speed Up WordPress: Make Readers Happy and Your Site Green”, I have this handy little tool on my FireFox called YSlow .  And I’ll be using it to optimize my blog so the SLOW WILL BE NO MO.

Just as soon as I have time.  I mean, you see how long it took me just to install a couple new themes to play around with? 

THE BUSIES.  I HAZ THEM.

Still.  Here’s a short little list of all the plates I have spinning merrily:

And that’s just my projects.  I still go to martial arts class, I still work on the Eternal Project, I date people, I try to keep my dog well exercised and happy because she’s the bestest dog on the planet, I am trying to build a couple of DJ sets to shop around, and I still love to write using blogs for my various writing outlets (this here personal one, OurPDX, and now the WordCamp Portland blog is gonna need some loves from me.)

Oh yeah, and work. 

So, busy.

I could use some help with that stuff, you know.  If you’re not doing anything.  Stuff like:

  • Recommending great local bands who’d like to play the 30 Hour Day 2 Variety Show on July 3rd
  • Volunteering for some core responsibilities for WordCamp Portland
  • Mow my front yard

Ok I was kidding about the yard one.

Mostly kidding.

Also, just so you know – lolcats  might be taking over my brain.  If my posts start to become a bit gibberishy-make that more gibberishy than usual-please send a couple dogs, or cat exterminator, to save me and my dog from the lolcats.

Haxx0rred!!!

There I was, minding my own business, reading Twitter and FaceBook getting ready for bed, when Scott Rogers (@bigscotty ) and @magdaZINE  send me the following tweets:

@magdaZINE: @morganpdx your site keeps redirecting me to ChinaTV is that supposed to happen?  Hacked?

@bigscotty:     @morganpdx Same thing here.  ChinaTV.

@morganpdx It happens after about 10 minutes or after I scroll over something.  Still investigating.

@morganpdx Definetely a redirect after a few seconds.

(incidentally, Scott is a very funny guy, I hear. Something about some theater , and maybe ignite 8 ? And a 30 hour day ? Huh. Anyway…)

Now, people get hacked every day (or so I’ve been told by the paranoid cyber security dept at my work).  However, I’ve always been of the opinion that you should cater your security to the likelihood of attack and the sensitivity of your content. Now I know I SAID I was famous , but I’m really not. Really. And I don’t post anything-ANYTHING- of value, except for my own and (I dearly hope!) your entertainment. So the way I see it, my security risk is lower than a con man in an orphanage.

But it happened. I got hit. Haxx0red!! This was NOT r0xxin mah b0xx0rs. All my posts are belong to China TV.

So, grumbling and cursing and sending out palpable waves of pissed off energy throughout my entire neighborhood, I deleted my entire blog with the exception of the database, the wp-content/plugins directory and the wp-config.php file, downloaded a brand spankin’ new fresh copy of the latest WordPress install  (version 2.9.1), and copied the new files over. Problem solved, except I forgot to keep my themes folder. Oops. Well heck, I was gonna change my theme anyway, right?

*Edit: Problem not yet solved.  I’m running into lots of missing stuff, and navigation is totally fubar still.  I’m still researching issues.  But at least the home page still works 😛

I will admit, somewat sheepishly, that I did NOT have the latest release of WordPress installed, as Matt Mullenweg  encouraged us to do when he spoke at WordCamp Portland  last year. Considering I’m gonna be running the dang thing this year, I’m happy to say that I’ve remedied that oversight!  I can’t say that having the latest version would have kept this from happening, but it certainly didn’t help, I’m sure.

SO THANK YOU MISTER HACKER. THANK YOU FOR MAKING MY BLOG WORTHY OF RUNNING WORDCAMP PORTLAND, AND CAUSING ME TO UPGRADE MY THEME.

Now, does anyone think it’s at all odd that my WordPress blog was hacked two days after it was announced I was going to be running WordCamp Portland?

Yeah, me neither.  Mostly.

This is a test.

Hi internets. How are you doing? Good? Great.

I’m actually not writing this blog post at home. Which by itself is not so strange, although it has been a while since I wrote a post away from home. What is strange, however, is that I’m writing this blog post ON MY IPHONE. I know, huh? I mean can you picture me, out and about, doin my thang and writing posts on the fly? On the train? While out drinking with my pals? Spelunking through the woods? Hanging out at a geeky blogging conference?

Ahem.

Yeah ok, I’m at a WordPress camp, and learned about an awesome wordpress iPhone app. If you really must know.

And I can even take pics on my phone, and stick them right in my blog post without even skipping a beat. Or a talk. Or a beer. Or a dirty gin martini. VERY dirty.

The potential for awesome is endless, right? Yeah, I think so too.

By the way, this is where I am right now. So you can really visualize it. I’m all about sharing, you know.