Kabosh- Little Pills

speakerI’m going to start posting up some songs that I really like. Usually they will be from independent artists that can do with some exposure and I always like turning people on to new music. This first song is by a singer/rapper Big Krizz Kaliko and rapper Tech N9ne. But this isn’t rap music. This is their successful attempt at rock forming a group called Kabosh. If you’ve heard Kaliko in the past, you know he can sing opera, funk, r & b and now rock. He’s an amazing talent, and well, Tech N9ne has been one of my favorite rappers for many years now. This is a really good track. It was included as a bonus track on a Strange Music (record label) Sampler that came with Tech N9ne’s Everready: The Religion.

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The Master Plan of Google

Google privacyI came across this video about Google and it’s master plan. When you think about it, Google really does have control of a lot of information. They have my pictures in Picassa, my emails in Gmail and Google Apps for Domains, they have some papers I’ve written in Google Docs and Spreadsheets, they know who visits my websites via Analytics and what sites I visit if other websites use the service. They even know where I am on a given day via Google Calendar and could even track me down to an exact location via Google Earth and/or Google Maps. Recently they can even track my online purchases if I use Google Checkout. They pretty much have my entire life stored somewhere. Do I mind? It depends on what is done with this information. Obviously when I use Google services I know the risks and still continue to put it out there. This video makes you think though. Hat tip Google Inside

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Implementing Google Adsense

I have decided to start putting a small amount of ads on here just to help pay for hosting and whatnot. I know what some of you may think and remind me of my thoughts on ads on personal blogs, but this site generates a fair amount of traffic, more than my others that my ads do okay on, and by okay I mean at least I make a little something every day. And I don’t think they look too terrible here. The theme is nice enough that the ads blend in fairly nice. If I don’t really make anything from them then they shall disappear. We shall see.

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PhoenixBlue WordPress Theme Update

I was playing around in various test beds today and noticed that a blog I installed via Dream Host’s One-Click Install was messing up the PhoenixBlue Theme. I’ve noticed this happening on a lot of different blogs (and I’m pretty sure they were all hosted on DH because DH automatically installs themes with WordPress and they install a previous version of PB). So I was trouble shooting this problem and not finding the cause. It looked fine in IE 7, but not Firefox. It was happening on Dream Host and not my other host. I couldn’t figure it out, but I knew it was a CSS issue somewhere. Then I tested it on a self-installed instance of WP on DH and it was still messing up. Okay, it wasn’t the one-click install that was causing the problem. So let’s try installing again on the host it was never broke on. Installed and the theme was broke. Hmmm… Why would it work on one blog and not the other. Same files, no changes. I found a style.css from the previous release and uploaded that. Bingo, everything is fixed. So now I just have to find what code was changed between the two and figure out why it’s breaking the theme. For anyone that wanted the theme and was having the issue of the sidebar being below the posts and the posts shifted too far to the right, this new style.css should fix that and you can download the WordPress theme PhoenixBlue here. Let me know if you are having any problems. Also, to see it in action, check out mikeschepker.net

Trillian Astra

I’ve been using Trillian for a while now. It is a great instant messaging program. It combines all the major IM clients in one, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, IRC, Jabber (and Gtalk) and more. The only complaint I’ve ever had with it is that it has been a bit heavy on resource usage. That doesn’t bother me anymore because if I used all the alternatives I’d be using way more resources. I do use AIM, MSN, and Yahoo so that would be three IM clients open and running. My computer couldn’t handle that with all the other things I have going, especially since the new AIM and Windows Live Messenger have become bloated pieces of crap. Yahoo is the least bloated of those but I feel like a 12 year old when I use it because it has all these stupid kid-friendly features and icons.

Anyway, enough with my rant. The real reason I was writing this post is because there will be a new Trillian coming out soon named Trillian Astra. I’ve not used it yet, though I am signed up to be a tester whenever they draw more names and add more testers. This program looks very promising. Astra will have faster loading times, improved memory usage and memory leaks plugged, widgets, a web interface to stay connected when you are away from your computer, and overall interface changes. I can’t wait for this program to come out.