EVula's Blog

Imperial Situation Report

Word of warning: this is a long blog entry. Lots of stuff to discuss, especially towards the end. If you could, please respond with any feedback you may have, positive or negative.

Bad News

Unfortunately, not everything is coming up roses right now. My car died Saturday, when I was attempting to drive out to Murfreesboro to see a show. *sigh* I talked to my mechanic; he thinks its the timing belt, which isn't easy to fix. He won't be able to get to it for another few days, but by the end of the week, I should have it back (hopefully).

Since I've got a show opening Friday (more on that below), not having a car complicates things greatly, and adds a fair amount of stress. Dad is providing transportation to work in the morning (and to rehearsal in the evening), but I have to hitch a ride with two of the actors to get back home; thankfully they pass my place anyway, so it isn't too inconvenient for them.

On top of all that, I'm also a bit under the weather. I rarely get sick, so this is pretty surprising. I'm overloading on Vitamin C (the only medicine I ever take), but it's a bit early to tell if it is having any effect.

Good News

In stark contrast to the Bad News, I've got some fairly big good news to share.

As you know, my birthday was the 17th. In celebration, I bought myself the computer I was lusting after.

I love my computer dearly; not to exaggerate or anything, but the new iMacs really are the "computer of the future" that everyone used to dream of. Small and efficient (in the sense that everything is all in one unit), it's loaded with cool little features; aside from general Mac stuff like Dashboard and GarageBand, the Front Row software is surprisingly cool, plus the hardware stuff like the magnetically-stored Remote and built-in iSight (which also provides a microphone for voice commands). Speaking of iSight, if anyone wants to help me test out the webcam, feel free to find me on iChat ("EVula").

I purchased the iMac with my recently acquired Amazon.com credit card. The nice thing is that the card accrues points for every dollar I spend on it, eventually culminating in a free gift card with Amazon; by putting the computer on it, I leaped forward on the points. ;)

Theatre News

Friday, Enchanted April opens. This is, thankfully, a comedy; a pleasant change of pace from Blackbird and Mother Courage, though MC at least had some humor to offset the drama.

Also in theatre news, I've officially overloaded myself in May and June. The first two weeks have me doing Midsummer Night's Dream with ACT 1. For the second half of the month, I'll be running lights for Little Prince with People's Branch Theatre. After that, it'll be two weeks with Love! Valour! Compassion!, again with ACT 1. That's six straight weeks. I believe I can officially be declared insane. In my defense, the PBT gig is paying, as is Enchanted April.

I'll be taking a break from theatre in June. Look for a lot more work from me starting then. That's a nice segue into...

The Empire

Several different things to say on this front.

Emperor vs. Spam, the Eternal Struggle: I spent quite a bit of time yesterday clearing out a ton of spam. I haven't been running the Blacklist as often as I should, so it has accumulated a bit. Whoops.

However, I'm taking a different, more long-term minded approach this time: several older blogs have been sitting open, allowing hundreds of bots to sully them with spam. For several of them, I've gone in and manually removed every bit of spam, then closed them to more comments. Once I do that, I configure the Blacklist to not check them (if no spam can be posted there, why should it check? It'll only increase the load time).

So far, I've confined my editing to the smaller blogs (that only have a 10 or so entries). My own blog turned out to be an absolute chore; this is my 203rd entry, and while I'd previously closed all pre-2005 entries, it still sucks to go through so many pages. My blog's spam count has dropped significantly; I had around 3,000 replies before I started, but now I'm down to 568 (I'm running the Blacklist simultaneously; I didn't delete all of those by hand).

Eventually, I'll be deleting neglected blogs (but only after emailing the authors, which I don't have time for right now). I don't have a problem with them sitting around collecting dust; just as long as they aren't gathering spam, they aren't harming anything.

Lair Updates: After Enchanted April is finished (the 8th), I don't have another theatre commitment until the 30th. This means lots of time I could spend working on the Lair. The question, I suppose, is what do I focus my attention on?

Here's what I've got to work with:

1. Joke Archive
2. Improvements/additions to the Store
3. <cryptic grin>-level overhaul of the site
4. Improvements to existing sections (like Rants and Reviews)

The Joke Archive will require me to either write my own CMS, or find one that I can use (I've sketched out the rough outline for my own CMS, so it's slightly less daunting than it sounds). However, "slightly less daunting" is still daunting, so I doubt I'll be doing that right now. That's a damn shame because there's no point in converting it all to PHP just to transfer everything into a database (which means I won't be adding any new jokes until then, either; I've got a ton to add, too).

Numbers two, three, and four, on the other hand, are much more doable.

Work on the Store will be confined, for now, to just getting the black shirts I mentioned up and available. Once that is done, I'll be taking a long, hard look at replacing or augmenting the CafePress with a Spreadshirt store; Spreadshirt offers a variety that CafePress can't touch. Lower priority than just getting the black shirts up, though. That, and getting the gorram Store Spotlight thing to work again.

I've had plans for overhauling the content on evula.com for some time, but I think it's finally time to move forward with it. Not much to say about it until I do it; suffice it to say, it might upset some people, and I don't want to give them a chance to argue with me. ;) On the plus side, it'll go a long ways toward improving my sanity, which is something no one can argue with...

As for improvements for the existing sections, this generally consists of a few small things, like expanding what I did for the Movie Review section (adding the poster image) into the other sections (album covers for Music, etc.). I've also got an affiliate account with the iTunes Music Store that I've been meaning to incorporate for a while now.

I mentioned GarageBand earlier... what a fun program. I've already made a few short little songs; each micro-opus is about a minute long, and fairly simple. Once I get them to a point where I'm comfortable sharing them, I'll publish them to the Lair in the form of an update. :)

Other Updates: As I mentioned above, April is going to be a pretty open month for me. I do have some non-Lair stuff that requires my attention, however.

ACT 1's website is in need of an update. I've got several photos to add and what have you, but specifically, I've got a fantastic automated mailing list system that I need to customize for them (specifically, I need to modify the templates so that it fits with the rest of the site). This is relevant to the Empire because I may, at some point, implement a similar system, although I haven't given it much thought beyond this very paragraph.

At some point, and this goes back to the "Emperor vs. Spam" business, I need to either upgrade MovableType on blog.evula.net, or switch over to WordPress. Upgrading will run me about $100, but will be fairly easy; WordPress is free, but upgrading might be a bitch. Neither will happen next month; first and foremost, I'll need to ditch the neglected blogs to make the transition a bit smoother. I'm only listing it for my own reference. :)

phew!

Posted by Eric at March 28, 2006 10:53 AM