WordPress

This will be the first part of the series and we will focus on five plugins at a time for WordPress that I find to be extremely useful. As I have said before I think that WordPress (NOTE: currently running WP v2.7.1) is one of the greatest pieces of open-source software EVER created. Yes I feel that strongly. I’m a psuedo-tech-savy individual, but if that isn’t you don’t be afraid this utility is made for you and me. That’s why I love it. Y

For the first post I will randomly pick five of the plugins that are currently being utilized here at This and That. As I add, replace and remove plugins on the site I will make an effort to document the process and let you know about any issues that occur.

1) Plugin Manager - This is one of the most practical and easy to use plugins I have seen in a long time for WP. Without this  when you find a plugin that you like, you have to download the .zip file to your local machine, unzip it and then upload that to your web server to activate via the WP Admin Control Panel. Not anymore. Via Plugin Manager all you need to do is go to the Add New section of the Plugins menu item and search for plugins by a variety of methods (term, author, tags) and when you find the one that you want click on the title of it and up pops a new window giving you all the information about the plugin, but with a new twist Install Now. Click the button and your plugin will be installed right before your eyes and it even allows you the option to activate once it is installed. It doesn’t get any easier than that.
Author’s Homepage: http://www.drunkadmin.com

2) Google (XML) Sitemap: If you create content on the web and no one knows you published it, is it really content? One could argue that there is a lot of content on the internet that no one knows about with the last reported number of blogs currently being in excess of 184 MILLION. According to sitemaps.org, “Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.” This plugin helps to let the rest of the world outside of your mom, wife, siblings and car pool know that you have a blog.
Author’s Homepage: http://www.arnebrachhold.de

3) Exclude Page(s): This is a new find for me and it already has come in hand on one of my other WP-based sites http://www.awesometownfest.com. In the past, I would have to custom edit the .php files to not show certain pages and let them remain hidden from the navigation menus, but now that has all been simplified. With this tool all you have to do is un-check the option to include the page in the navigation menus and it will still be accessible via a direct link, but will not appear in any page menus. Simple, but highly useful feature that will come in handy ten-fold.
Author’s homepage: http://www.simonwheatley.co.uk

4) Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button: If you’re creating content on the web, you want as many people to read, view or stream as humanly possible. This plugin makes that even easier. No need to leave the site just click this easy to use button and you’ll see a laundry list of options to share, save, bookmark and even email the current content. This is a feature you see everywhere and will want to have on your site. A good rule of thumb that I like to use is to give people options and this will do that for you. Some of your readers might be on facebook, while others like to use delicious and others might just want to e-mail to a friend or colleague and this has all of that with one simple click or roll-over of the mouse. You can configure it to be on the bottom of all your posts, pages or only those on the homepage of your site. It’s really up to you. Note: there is also a similar plugin from the same team that allows your users to subscribe to any, but since WordPress is easily configurable for RSS feeds I don’t use this feature.
Author’s homepage: http://www.addtoany.com/

5) Akismet: This is not the coolest or flashiest plugin available for your WordPress blog, but it will be one of the unsung heroes of your site. As seen in the comic books, power can be used for evil and there in lies the ongoing issue of having to defend against SPAM and bots that auto-post junk to your comments and clutter up your sites. If you don’t get them under control they will feed on your content and make your life hell, plain and simple. I have seen this several times when moderating message boards and on this very site before I made this new friend. Automatic Kismet or Akismet for short is looking to rid your site of spam through an “collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging” ( via akismet.com). Once you’ve installed it, (note: you will need to get a Wordpress API key) you will never have to worry about track back and comment spam on your blog again.
Author’s Homepage: http://ma.tt/

That’s all for now. Please leave comments below…

before the shaving

my newly shaved head

If you would still like to donate - CLICK HERE

Napster

Looking back on the history of the music technology tango, we have Napster who came onto the scene in the mid-late 90s and is still seen as one of the pioneers of the getting new music into people’s hand movement and they did it by way of peer to peer file sharing. Similar technologies are used today in the way of BitTorrent and online file sharing (senspace, mediafire, rapidshare, etc.) and it continues to evolve due to the growing popularity of the personal mp3 player(iPod, Zune, etc.) As a music fan there is always music a few clicks away, which translates to Life is Good!

The band Dispatch greatly benefited from Napster’s infiltration of the college market and were able to grow to become one of the nation’s most popular unsigned (by choice) bands. The Grateful Dead, Phish & the jamband music scene as a whole grew exponentially off the back of its fans sharing their music. Originally it was the classic B+P where you’d send someone blank tapes and enough money for postage and they’d make a copy of the show and send it back to you. These were very popular especially with list service groups. I know I made a lot of trades back in the day via rec.music.phish and The Phish Bowl on AOL. Now through BitTorrent and sites like etree.org and the Live Music Archive it is even easier to get shows right after they happen, the previous way could take weeks to get you your favorite show from someone’s list. Now we have instant gratification.

Radiohead's In Rainbow

Most recently we saw the band Radiohead do something that hadn’t been done before on such a grand scale and that was give their music away to their fans and let them decide how much if anything they wanted to pay for the album. People thought that they were crazy, but it was seen that this still proved lucrative for the band as they did generate revenue from this stunt, but they also got tons of positive press from music fans and critics all over the world. The album ‘In Rainbows’ went on to receive four Grammy Nominations in the following categories: Album of the Year, Best Alternative Album, Best Rock Song for ‘House of Cards’ and Best Short Form Music Video for ‘House of Cards’.  They also performed at this year’s Grammy Awards show with the USC marching band in what was in my opinion one of the best collaborations in Grammy Awards history.

Umphrey's McGee

One band that continues to grow with the technology and embrace it to not only increase their fan base, but to share with those fans and include them in unique ways is Umphrey’s McGee. The ability for fans to tape shows and trade them amongst themselves has always been an amazing thing for me and allowed me to get turned on to new music from bands from all over the country / world. While Umphrey’s continue to grow in size they have always been true to those things that have made them successful, which is why you will see that they have over 1300 shows avaialble for download for FREE on the Live Music Archive. Last week alone they had over 3500 downloads on LMA, this to me is amazing and a testament to their size and fan base as well as their continued dedication to new and original approaches to their live performance.

On top of that they make all of their shows available as high-quality SBDs for download and purchase via their live download site UM Live in association with nugs.net. They have created 75 unique podcasts of their music dating back to 2004, which just shows how ahead of the curve they are when it comes to technology and getting the music out to the fans in unique ways. Now you might be thinking how is this different than other bands on the scene today and to that I will say that I’m just getting started here painting the whole picture of their Interweb and technology skillz.

As the band continues evolving and finalizing their plans for world domination they continue to impress me with the extra bells and whistles they are putting together for the fans. As a tech geek and music lover, it is nice to see these two worlds meet up in the world of Umphrey’s McGee. Here are a few of their recent additions that I think are cutting edge and should be looked into by other artists.

Twitter

1) Twitter - I have been using Twitter for over a year now and as I became more involved I immediately thought this would be a perfect tool for bands to update their fans, send messages from the road and get instant feedback. I was happy to see that @umphreysmcgee had added this tool to their repertoire and use it in conjunction with their blog, The Floor.

2) The Floor: Blog - as I just mentioned the band has their own blog, the Floor which they launched about 9 months and have continued to improve upon with each post. It is still in its infancy it but has  proven to again be another top notch Umph production. The band has used this device to show their fans behind the scenes antics, incredible photos, videos and involve them in inside jokes. Reading each post you can’t help but smile, laugh and wish that you were part of their crew, because while it is show business they’re having a damn good time doing it.

3) Mozes - UM Mobile - this feature is a newly added weapon to the arsenal, which allows fans to get UM news, ring tones and wallpapers for their phones. It’s a straight forward service, which I have seen attempted by other artists but no one has used it other than a way to sell more band schwag, sent a blast about upcoming shows in their area and sell more schwag (ring tones, wallpapers, etc.) In one of the coolest and most original usage of such a service, the band recently let the fans decide which cover song would be featured at an upcoming show by texting their vote for one of the five choices offered by the guys. It is one thing to be involved and have a presence using new services and social media outlets, but it is another to be innovative and being ahead of the pack.

4) Unlocking content via Mantis pre-order - when a band goes into the studio to record an album it can be a very intimate and private experience. There are re-takes, flubs and alternative versions that never see the light of day. When UM went into the studio to create Mantis, they recorded an album full of all new material that they had never before been performed live. This was a first in the band’s eleven year history, so to say they were entering new territory would be an understatement. If this wasn’t already an exciting chapter for the band, they decided to offer up to their fans another unique opportunity to gain access to music and content from the process. The idea was to release audio, videos and even pictures from the band’s vault based on the number of pre-orders. Now not only is this is a cool technology infused idea, but a great business move that surely help to increase the number of orders. The CD acted as the verification key to the exclusive content.  The more people who ordered it, the more content would be unlocked from the band.  This also stretched your cost per track buck, which is never a bad thing. The original plan was to have only eight levels to unlock, but due to popular demand and strong pre-order numbers the band ended up adding a 9th level of material which just shows the greatness of the idea.

5) iClips / PPV shows - this is the most recent addition and in my opinion their best to date. In a partnership  with iClips.net, Umphrey’s McGee is making five shows on their upcoming tour available via pay-per-view. For only $5 dollars, you can stream live over the net these shows right to your computer. It doesn’t get much better than that. I know there are many bands who I don’t get to see live as much as I would like due to work, tour schedules and finances. Now Umphrey’s is allowing me to sit at home and be a part of the party for only five dollars, which I think is a reasonable price for this service. I can foresee streaming parties where fans hook-up their PC / MAC to their home entertainment system and are right there at the show. Friends coming over with their favorites imports or micro brews whose price tag at show would only afford them a couple of watered down Budwicks from the venues bar. The possibilities are endless and exciting and looking at the recent demand for the second comeback from that band from Vermont, this would have been a nice option for the ticket less.

I look forward to the future to see what new rabbit this band pulls out of their hat. Stay tuned…

Fast forward to present day. In early January it was announced that they would be re-opening the Beacon Theater in New York City, a musical landmark. The performer for the two night-extravaganza would be, that’s right you probably guessed it, no other than Paul Simon himself. Tickets were to go on sale with the dreaded Ticketmaster three weeks before the show. I was beyond excited to try and get them and in turn get to cross him off the list. The ticket gods weren’t in our favor as I don’t have an American Express Gold and so I couldn’t get tickets via the week-long pre-sale. Really? A week, these people are so rich that they need a week to get around to buying tickets?! As you can see I’m a little bitter :laugh:

The public on-sale was Sunday February 1st at 10am. This was one of the first public on-sale dates that fell on a Sunday, but regardless I was up and manning the computer and phone lines ready to get those tickets. I get online and connect via the phone. I get in a little early and make the small talk asking about Bruce Springsteen tickets on-sale dates as well as Ray Lamontagne who is coming to CT in April (he’s in the top 5 for both of us too) all the while watching the clock. I notice that it is now 10:00:01 and ask about Paul Simon tickets at the Beacon Theater on February 14th, 2009 and that I’d like a pair of seats together and the cheapest available to the show. I’d love to say we were trying for the best seats in the house, but the cheapest tickets were 79 bucks or so before ‘convenience fees’ and other charges. The TM agent lets me know that there aren’t a single pair of tickets anywhere in the venue, so I ask her to check for the Friday the 13th show which I believed to be the harder tickets. She queries the system and returns the same information for the show, not a pair of tickets available to the show regardless of ticket price. Bummed is an understatement.

Phase 2 of the plan goes into motion and I begin to search the interweb for these sought after tickets with eBay and craigslist.org being the two main locations. Immediately after the tickets sold out tickets were at the very least double the ticket prices that were already up there in price. I would e-mail and follow up on every lead thinking that it realistically was going to be difficult to score these tickets, but a few refreshes and searches each day isn’t really going to hurt to make the effort, I mean this is Paul Simon at the Beacon - two musical legends in their own right.  New offers would come across the screen throughout the day and I’d click on every one with the intention of picking up tickets for under $250, but realistically had set the cap at $300 if the right tickets were available to us.

A few times I would see auctions on eBay to only be outbid at the last minute while I was in a meeting - go figure. I figured at the very least we would head down to the Beacon and see what we could get in front of the venue. Friday night’s set list comes in and Art Garfunkel shows up to join Paul for a three-song Simon & Garfunkel encore set. I was flipping out and even read on a few message boards that there were rumors of Sir Paul McCartney appearing on Saturday, who is the other Paul in our top two. A few phone calls and e-mails throughout the day leave us empty handed, so we decide that if we don’t have tickets confirmed by 5PM we’d head into the city and make a night of it one way or the other.

Around 3:30PM, I see a post on Craigstlist.org stating the seller wouldn’t be able to make it to the show due to them being in an accident so someone would have to come to them and pick up the tickets. I reach out to the seller as this was posted in the New Haven, CT section of the site. I assumed that I would have an advantage being in CT and not too far from New Haven.  I reached out and asked the price of the tickets they said that they wanted $400 as the tickets were $169.50 . It didn’t make sense to me to have to go door to door and pick up the tickets out of my way and pay more than face. After some back and forth the seller agreed to sell them to me for $300. I thought that this was such a great deal. I couldn’t believe that we were going to get to see Paul Simon in concert.

This is where things get weird and should have been a flag to me. The seller asked me if I knew where New Roc City was in New Rochelle, NY. I had no idea where that was and with the way this story ends, don’t see myself going back anytime soon. I confirmed the address and we agreed to meet at 6:30PM at the Applebee’s there. Clayton called me to make sure I was OK with directions and to get an idea as to what time we’d be arriving there. We were very close and agreed to call him once we got there. I got to the Applebee’s and he said he’d be right there, weird occurrence #2.

This guy did not look like he had been in any accident as he was walking perfectly fine (#3) and on top of it probably couldn’t even name a single Paul Simon song (#5). We went outside and he took the tickets out of his pocket and I looked at them. They looked fine to me. I took out the cash out of my pocket and handed it to him. HE DIDN”T COUNT THE MONEY (#6), which at the time I thought was REALLY odd. This alone should have been the sign that I was getting ‘robbed’ by this guy, but I headed into my car excited but tentative. I take out the tickets and look at them again and they just didn’t seem right. The paper that it was printed on was too shiny (#7)and the ink looked too fresh (#8) and in the bottom left corner of the ticket was a date that just didn’t make sense to me. It said 29DEC08 (#9), which is usually the date of when the ticket went on sale or I think it is the date that show was announced to the public. Neither of these would match the date as this show wasn’t announced till the middle of January. The empty feeling in my stomach got deeper as we headed to the Beacon. The ride down was pretty quiet.

When we arrived in the city to add salt to the about to be huge wound, we couldn’t find a lot and it took us another 25 minutes to find one. This was one of those pricey spots that I later would find out was ‘ONLY’ $32.00 / hour - a great deal, right? So we make the walk of shame over to the Beacon right before showtime and get in line with the ticket masses. I close my eyes and hope that I was just overreacting and that somehow these were going to scan - survey says…..

‘Sorry sir, these tickets are fake & I’ll have to take them.’ We manage to at least get them to let us keep the stubs so that if we can press charges we have some proof, but that is all we have. Proof that you can pay $300 for tickets to NOT go see Paul Simon at the Beacon in NYC. We will see Paul Simon in concert, but will not purchase the tickets via Clayton at the AppleBee’s in New Roc City.

Thanks for listening, getting this off my chest was theraputic. Until next time…

Somehow during this year I got a girlfriend and started ‘dating’ one of the girls in my class and my friend started dating her friend. Back then I think that was how it worked you dated one of the girls and her friend had to date one of your friends. After our “super romantic” first kiss, I felt like big man on campus meanwhile I think on a good day I was 4 foot 2. I was a wee lad for many years especially going into high school where I didn’t break the 5 foot barrier till the summer. So what does any super serious in a relationship in 6th grade boyfriend do when Valentine’s Day approaches? If you guessed go to the mall for only the best merchandise money that your parents gave you can buy, you’re right.

Myself and a few of the guys in my class went to the mall with the girls as kind of a group date / shopping extravaganza. We split up and went to find the gifts that would show our feelings to our signifanct others (everytime I write these lines it is in jest especially realizing I am 11 years old at the time) and still come in under budget. I picked up a few knick knacks at the mall and found the perfect finishing touch on the gifts, a teddy bear heart poster. Now I haven’t purchased posters in awhile, but remember that when one would get posters at the mall or in sport shops that they would be in racks with numbers and sometimes even letters so you would know which poster matched up with the display poster.

brought to you by the #9

This is where it gets good. My romantic bear poster was for this story the #9 poster. I looked down in thestacks of posters and found myself the bear poster of all bear posters and purchased it. I was very happy with myself and ready to give my gift to her to show her how special she was to me. This part of the story is a little foggy, but the level of embarassment is still very high. I am not sure if I gave her the poster with the group or if we did it privately, but regardless it still happened and makes me laugh still today. Remember the #9 that was the bears poster, well what do you get if you flip upside down the #9 - yup you guessed it a #6. So I was either supposed to get her the #6 or the #9, but instead got the other which was flipped upside down in the rack.

not the actual poster

The poster that I got instead for her was ‘The Rules of the Bathroom‘ - no I am not making this stuff up. She wouldn’t give back the poster either and when I ran into her many years ago in college she let me know that she STILL has the poster.  I think it’s really funny, but at the time there wasn’t a word invented that could describe the level of embarassment for my little 6th grade self.

Glad I shared. What was one of your embarassing Valentine’s Day moments?

DVR

I love it. It is a friend and member of our family.  If you have a TV you should have one. It’s that simple. No longer should you be a slave to the traffic light TV guide.  Watch the shows when you want, when you want. As the idea of spawning is discussed I can see how this would come in handy for those who might have to watch kid programs when their favorite shows are on or whose schedules are all out of whack and at the mercy of the little one(s).

I remember many moons ago if you had a night class or were going out and wanted to watch something you’d have to set your VCR and hope that you were skilled enough to be able to program the VCR properly and you could only record ONE show at a time. The times they are a changin…

TiVo

Tivo is the originator of this great service and the first to offer it commercially, but while they are still in business it seems their idea has been borrowed by cable companies all over the world. We have the basic DV-R package with Cablevision where we can record two shows simulataneously and I belive we can store upwards of 100 hours on the lovely device. There are limitations where you can’t watch a third show while you are recording two of them at the same time, so this can be annoying when a new program comes into the mix that you want to deem DV-R worthy or see if you like a series premier, etc but that isn’t the end of the world IMO.

In coming weeks / months we will be switching over to the AT&T U-verse plan which takes DV-R to a whole new level. We will be able to record more shows concurrently as well as share all DV-R’d programs on any of the cable boxes in our abode. This is great for the Gossip Girls, America’s Next Top Model, Medium, etc. that the wife likes to add to the DV-R mix.

att&t

There are two other great features that have me excited about the switch to AT&T. The first is the ability to program the DV-R from the web, this will come in handy when you’re staying late for a meeting or just forgot to put something down to record.  The second which is seasonal is the integration with Yahoo! Sports for Fantasy Football and giving you up to the minute stats on the members of your team right on the screen. This is sweet, but will make the misses a little crazy as she already feels like a football widow on Sundays during the season.

Now from a total nerd perspective the concept and the design is fairly simple. By that I mean I know how it works I just don’t know how to create one. Basically it seems to me that you are just recording using a hard drive with a UI that allows you to decide the amount of space (shown to you as time) that you want to allocate for a specific project. The device then writes that data to the hard drive and organizes it in the dataset to make it accessible from the DV-R menu. This is the front-end that sits over top of the data to make it easier to find for you.

From a TV watching standpoint you get to watch TV more efficiently. For a one-hour program, you have roughly 15-20 minutes of commercials that aren’t necessary anymore. This isn’t good in terms of advertising dollars and getting you to watch their commercials, but I’m willing to bet that this issue is already in the works by the big wigs. So do the math you get 2 ‘one-hour’ programs and can watch them in only 90 minutes time. More time to get your work done or watch another show (or two). It’s your choice and that’s the best part.

I’m off to catch up on some TV…

March 6-7-8 2009

So as you may or may not know I was lucky enough to score two 3-day packages for Phish’s return three-night run at the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, VA on March 6,7 & 8 2009. We’re very excited to be able to be there for this special occasion as I brought Sue with me to the previous hiatus return at MSG. Unfortunately due to the whole being a teacher thing, Sue can’t take off more than one day during that period of time in March due to it being during the testing period at school. The obvious choice was to take the time off to be there for the Friday night show.

The original plan was for me to go to the Sunday show and we’d meet up back in CT on Monday. The wife is awesome like that. Besides Phish one of the other things that I am very passionate about are helping raise money for charities that are important to me especially non-profits. Over the last few years I have been able to put on benefit concerts to raise money for music education, battered women and Autism. Unfortunately there is always a deserving cause out there who is in need of help,  which is why I try and mix it up each year. With that being said I have always wanted to be a part of the St. Baldrick’s event where volunteers shave their head as a fund raising effort to help with childhood cancer research.  When I went on their site to sign up it just so happened to be on Sunday March 8th, 2008 - the same day as the last show of the three-night run in Hampton. Doh!

St. Baldrick's Foundation

I decided while it would be disappointing to miss the last night of the run that my ticket would go to better use if used to raise money for charity. The first of our pair of Sunday tickets was given to a friend who made a kind donation to my St. Baldrick’s fund. It gave my wife the idea to use her ticket to raise money for the American Cancer Society as we are taking part in this year’s Relay for Life. We are doing this for a good friend of ours who recently was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and is currently undergoing chemotherapy to fight it. Also my wife’s aunt is currently fighting against cancer as well and very strongly I might add. We are all staying positive and figure that something like this will help increase the amount of good vibes coming their way during this tough time.

ACS Relay for Life

So here’s what you’ve been waiting for, we have one ticket that we’d like to make available to the general public. Here are the rules. We will do this silent auction style and I will ask that you contact me directly with your bid. I will update the highest bid at least once a day so that you know what you have to beat to get the ticket. The person who is the highest bidder at the end of the period will be the winner and notifed of that. The winner will need to make a donation in the amount of their winning bid on our Relay for Life team page. Upon their donation being accepted I will overnight the ticket to you at no additional charge using FedEx. I will send you the confirmation number and any other additional details. The bidding period will end on Sunday February 22nd at 9pm EST. This will allow the winner plenty of time to put in their donation and for it to clear via the proper channels and still allow for me to FedEx it to you and make sure it gets to you before the big weekend. The opening bid will be $50.00.

My contact e-mail for bids is: aj.keirans@gmail.com

Please note I am not doing this to try and make money or any sort of backend scheme. I also am not interested in setting up a trade either. I DO need two tickets for Great Woods, but figure karma will help me figure that part of the equation out when the time comes. All and all I think it is fair to say that we all know someone who has been affected by cancer and it is our hope that this will help in that fight to find a cure.  As long as they don’t bust out a Gamehenge at the show we should be fine. Two out of three Hampton shows plus some summer tour shows sounds pretty good to me.

Best of luck to everyone. Here are the links to the two causes I am involved with for this.

American Cancer Society Relay for Life - CLICK HERE

St. Baldrick’s Foundation - CLICK HERE

“I felt that I could help
To science, I felt that I could help”
- Tube