Furth and Fortune blog by Will Murray

Thanks for vis­it­ing the Furth and Fortune blog!
If you’re new here, you may want to sub­scribe to our RSS feed. My blog cov­ers a wide vari­ety of top­ics because I am inter­ested in a lot of dif­fer­ent things. Go ahead, sub­scribe to my feed! You can also receive updates from my blog via email if you pre­fer. Thanks again!
—Will

I’m very glad that I am not more pro­lific! I just changed from a date-driven perma­link struc­ture for this blog to a “slug” based one. That means that instead of addresses based on dates like this: http://willmurray.name/blog/2005/07/12/29/ (the first post in this blog), now you will see addresses based on the topic of the mes­sage like this: http://willmurray.name/blog/msg/maintaining_your_pc/

Even though there are some WordPress plu­g­ins that help keep track of updated perma­links, they rely upon slugs (that’s the mes­sage topic), and I didn’t use them in the past. So I had to write a rather com­pli­cated Apache .htac­cess file to redi­rect all of the 88 older addresses to their shiny new addresses. If I didn’t do that, Google would lose track of every­thing, and any vis­i­tors fol­low­ing old links would end up with a 404 error mes­sage (file not found).

If your blog is hosted on an Apache server with mod_rewrite installed and you are inter­ested in know­ing more details about how I got this to work, please leave me a com­ment. If you’re run­ning on a Windows or Mac server, I don’t think my method will work.

So why go to all this pain? I’m plan­ning on mak­ing the upgrade to the new WordPress 2.5 within the next day or so, and I want to fix a few things that have been bug­ging me for a while. My old perma­link struc­ture was one of those things. I fig­ure it’s best to work out old bugs before bring­ing in any new ones.

As you can guess, that means that there will prob­a­bly be some hic­cups in the blog as I con­tinue to make changes to it over the next few days to weeks. If things look funky, check back in a few hours or con­tact me if it’s urgent (hope­fully that page won’t be affected since it’s not part of the blog itself).

Thanks for your patience and understanding!

Tags: Apache, debug­ging, mod_rewrite, redi­rect, updates, upgrades, WordPress

I’ve con­sol­i­dated sev­eral empty cat­e­gories, rearranged the rest, and added sev­eral new cat­e­gories to my blog. I know this broke at least a few incom­ing links. To find out more about the changes, please read the full article.

An arti­cle titled ‘Millennials’ buck IT secu­rity poli­cies got me to think­ing about some of the dif­fer­ences between the mil­len­ni­als, work­ers gen­er­ally age 28 and under, and their non-millennial coun­ter­parts. Business man­agers are scared of the changes these young pro­fes­sion­als are bring­ing to the work­place, and gen­er­ally do not respect or under­stand just how dif­fer­ently the world is viewed by them. These changes don’t scare me, and I’ll tell you why after the jump.

• Sacramento Kings lost…Again… Why do they keep trad­ing the good play­ers (and coach) away? #

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Tags: Sacramento Kings, Twitter updates

A funny thing about accents… you never really hear your own. I took a lit­tle online quiz to see if I have one. Naturally, I do, though it’s a pretty neu­tral one. Find out which after the jump.

It appears to be an ordi­nary day at the food court in your local mall. You’re calmly eat­ing your Hot Dog on a Stick, when sud­denly some­thing strange hap­pens… The cashier needs a nap­kin. She breaks into a musi­cal num­ber ask­ing for one, and before you know it, the whole food court comes alive with singers, dancers, and very sur­prised cus­tomers. Enjoy the charm­ing and humor­ous thrill that is: “Hot Dog on a Stick, the Musical”

• @Fungible: So you rec­om­mend Horton for the­ater, DVD, or Starz? #
• Spent most of the day in Citrus Heights work­ing. Ready to head home now. Yay! #
• @Fungible: Do you have kids? #
• is dri­ving home now. #
• @Fungible a dad #
• @Fungible a dad? What a con­cept! The sto­ries I could tell your kids. j/k #
• I hate it when the align­ment on my touch screen gets outa whack & it hits enter at the wrong time. #
• Going to eat din­ner and watch “Flushed Away” now. It’s good to be home! #

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Tags: movies, Twitter updates

• @chrisbrogan — I use StumbleUpon’s Firefox plu­gin to mark some­thing to share. I use Delicious’s FF plu­gin to prompt me when I bkmk some­thing #

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Tags: Delicious.com, StumbleUpon.com, Twitter updates

• Anyone else hav­ing Google Reader prob­lems? Navigation loads, but no feeds appear. Been going on for about 1.5 hrs since adding a feed. #
• Dang! Thought my com­puter was pos­sessed! Very strange sounds and talk­ing qui­etly in the back­ground. No ads. Was @chrispirillo’s live stream! #
• I’ve had a page on @chrispirillo’s blog open for over 1hr, but didn’t hear the quiet live stream over my music and the ambi­ent room noises. #
• As sus­pected, it appears the feed I most recently added was giv­ing Google Reader prob­lems. I unsub­scribed, and GR is fine now. Yay. #

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Tags: Chris Pirillo, Google Reader, Twitter updates

• 1 Fire Eagle invite gone; 3 still avail­able to give to those inter­ested in devel­op­ing under that new API (not for casual users yet) #
• I’m home from work. The 2^nd thing I do is check Twitter (1^st was grab food). I think I’m offi­cially addicted now. #
• @mkrigsman and @problogger — at least you don’t have jets fly­ing over­head prac­tic­ing for an upcom­ing air­show at 6:30am. Ugh. #
• @mkrigsman and @problogger — that is, it’s now 6:30am, and they are prac­tic­ing in the dark for an upcom­ing show. #
• @mkrigsman — I’m in Sacramento, CA #
• @mkrigsman — It’s crazy, too. They annoyed a lot of peo­ple last year prac­tic­ing mid-day. 6:30am will prob­a­bly make it worse. #
• @mkrigsman — Maybe the mil­i­tary thought fewer peo­ple would notice if it’s still dark? Military intel­li­gence = oxy­moron? #
• @mkrigsman — All kid­ding aside, I love the air show and the pilots are amaz­ing! I look for­ward to it every year. #
• I find it inter­est­ing that e-mail from Linspire still ends up in junk e-mail after repeat­edly white-listing the sender & domain in Outlook. #

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Tags: FireEagle.yahoo.net, junk e-mail, Linspire, mil­i­tary, Outlook, Sacramento, Twitter updates

• Off to the SacSBUG meet­ing in Natomas #
• Door was locked and had to wait for some­one to exit. Grr. #
• Funniest com­ment: Karl — People who go to con­fer­ences with “Swag Hoovers” to suck up all the free swag the ven­dors give away. #
• Good meet­ing. Time to go. #
• Funished at client. DVD firmware >4+ yrs out of date caused crashes. #
• Heading to Wal-Mart. What to do for din­ner at 11pm? #
• Impulse buy: McDonalds 2 Fish Filets for $4 made as a dou­ble w/ let­tuce & toma­toes #
• Tasted pretty good! Lowered carbs/cals eat­ing only half the bun (open-face) #
• Now on to Wal-Mart for gro­ceries. 24-hr shop­ping; love it! #
• I hate wait­ing for the cash reg­is­ters to roll over to the next day. #
• I think it took longer to check out at Wal-Mart than it did to shop. *sigh* #
• Heading home from a long day. #
• @jeradhill — Feel free to take a look at the site I did for my high school’s reunions for inspi­ra­tion. http://aghsreunions.com/blog #

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Tags: SacSBUG, shop­ping, tech sup­port, Twitter updates, Wal-Mart

• @JasonCalacanis: In my case, I got tired of see­ing one side of con­ver­sa­tions. W/ you added as friend, the time­line makes more sense. #

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Tags: Twitter

• @chrisbrogan: FriendFeed is very cool. I like it and feel it’s cur­rently the best of its breed that I’ve seen so far. #
• @audaciousgloop: It sounds like you have some cus­tom plu­gin code that doesn’t check if the plu­gin is installed before it tries to run. #
• @audaciousgloop: Did you get any errors with all plu­g­ins dis­abled and the default WP theme? If not, reen­able and see if probs arise. #
• @audaciousgloop: A trick I use for my var­i­ous blogs is one core repos­i­tory of WP plu­g­ins and themes. Then I use sym­links to the repos­i­tory. #
• @audaciousgloop: Then I only have to update plu­g­ins and themes in once place. Of course any bugs hit all at once, too. Eek. #
• @Scobleizer / @TechCrunch: mak­ing too big a deal out of 1 inter­view. Give her a break! I couldn’t be as bad as read­ing about it all day. #
• @audaciousgloop: No prob­lem buddy. Happy to help if/when I can. #
• @audaciousgloop: Symlinks are “sym­bolic links”… think of them as short­cuts to the actual direc­tory. If you have shell access, they’re gr8 #
• @audaciousgloop: If your host uses Linux/BSD/Unix and you have shell access, login and type “ln –help” for details. #
• @audaciousgloop: I should just do a how-to blog entry on WP using sym­links, eh? #
• @audaciousgloop: I’m migrat­ing ZenPhoto themes over to use the same method, but a bit trick­ier than WordPress. #
• @audaciousgloop: Alright then. Consider it a sam­ple of my tech writ­ing skills for your com­pany. I’ll let you know when it’s done. #
• @audaciousgloop: Here you go: http://www.allogro.com/main/2008/03/09/51/ Pls for­give the for­mat­ting. Didn’t real­ize the theme was so ugly. #
• @loiclemeur: Agreed. Social soft­ware (out­side of work) will become very “in”; tho work will prob­a­bly still frown on it. #
• @loiclemeur: Probably will result in yet another dig­i­tal divide. Those who soc­net and those who don’t. (Like e-mail vs. snail) #
• @audaciousgloop: Obrid shows errors after reg­is­ter­ing: Warning: opendir(/home/obridco/public_html/templates/profiles/Obrid) [function.ope… #
• @audaciousgloop: Not sure how good of a plat­form it is based on that. Yikes. #

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Tags: Allogro, FriendFeed.com, Linux, Obrid, plu­g­ins, sym­links, theme, WordPress

• @audaciousgloop: Thanks for the Tweetscan.com tip (even tho it wasn’t directed to me). The search results as RSS is a nice fea­ture. #
• Just fin­ished watch­ing The Last Mimzy on On Demand. It was a fun ride.Heard enough buzz the end wasn’t a sur­prise, but still good. #

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Tags: movies, Tweetscan

• @strawpoll alco­hol I rarely drink alco­hol much any­more any­way. Caffeine is some­times crit­i­cal to start­ing the day! #
• @jkusters @Fungible: Thanks. She came home 2nite a new kitty. Much like she was months ago. Early renal fail­ure. New spe­cial diet. Ok tho. #
• @ncoutlander: It’s great to see you using Twitter more. #
• @Fungible: Sweet tip on http://truly-free.org/ I’m sure pub­lish­ers aren’t happy, but like pirated music, it pro­lly won’t hurt prof­its much. #

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Tags: alco­hol, caf­feine, feline CRF, spe­cial diets, straw­polls