This site and a number of other projects are hosted on a Mac Mini that normally sits on my desk. Thing is…my desk moved. And, unfortunately, I didn’t confirm the firewall rules for the network in my new office before bringing the machine over. Thankfully Chris was happy to put the Mini on a different VLAN, and that solved everything (my other machines remain on the new “secure” network…ugh).

In the no too distant future, however, I’ll be moving the site again. This time to a private server somewhere. Varnish, the HTTPd accelerator, is a big part of my plans for that, though. So if I’m lucky (or smart, but better to bet on lucky), I’ll be able to do it without any additional downtime. Hopefully. And even if there is some downtime, it won’t be 24 hours again.

For the past year or so I’ve been wanting to design a non-bloggy theme for this site — a beautiful theme with a magazine-like front page showing the most recent post in a handful of categories. But I’m further from it now than last year, so it’s time to move on.

Which isn’t to say that I settled for my new theme. It’s based on Neo-Sapien by Small Potato. I made it a bit wider, the header a bit shorter, and the image is random-ish (random, but cached). I’m still not done tweaking it, but I’m really pleased with where it’s going. Most importantly (this one’s for you, JTPratt), you can now find easy links for things like bSuite and my other projects. And I’m also following Nielsen’s advice with the about and contact pages (though I have slightly hidden the about Casey page).

In my haste to actually finally do this, I decided to do it live. WP Super Cache, without which my blog falls over, made confirming changes a chore, but that forced me to work a bit more methodically. The fastest and easiest way to clear the cache after making a change is to either edit a post or select a new theme (and then change it back again). So if you looked at the site today, you may have found it switching back and forth between the old and new themes for most of the afternoon. And if I’d realized I’d just been linked by Lifehacker (for Sandee’s independence day daiquiri post), I might have done it differently.

The most recent version of my WordPress stats tracking plugin makes it very easy to see and track my top stories. I don’t know whether I should be proud or ashamed by them, but here they are:

1. Big Bear Photos
   That story gets a lot of morbid interest, and I’m sure the movie Grizzly Man will too.
    
2. K-Fee Energy Drink TV Ad
   For a while, though, people looking for that story were finding my Zygo energy vodka story instead.
    
3. Google Maps Rock, Hacking Them Rocks More
   Interest in this story is due to people looking for Google Earth hacks. I don’t have any, but that doesn’t stop people from putting up their email address and asking for them. Tip to those 160 people so far: putting an email address on the web is an invitation to spam. My real interest here is in the Google Maps API.
    
4. Vegas Guide, part 4: Flesh
   Sex sells, or at least it gets a lot of hits. That explains the next story too…
    
5. Seacoast Industry
   I guess it’s easy enough to understand the interest in these stories, but I think these two deserve more attention: Terror & Sexual Identity and NYC Sex Workers Pumped For RNC.
    
6. Le Parkour/Free Running/David Bell/Video
   This is cool on several levels, but if all you want is video candy, then I’ve got a recent wrap-up here.
    
7. Chernobyl Tour
   I’ve got a lot of nuclear stories here, including a few about the Nevada Test Site and a followup to that Chernobyl story.

tags: maisonbisson, popular, popular stories, top stories, top story

At 2560 x 1600 pixels, Apple’s Cinema HD display is big enough for three people’s egos.

tags: apple, cinema hd, computer, display, ego, maisonbisson, monitor, nosheep, spiralbound