Beyond the Misty Mountains

Archive for July, 2008

So previously I was running a terribly old version of Wordpress. (like installed over a year and a half ago old). Problem was I installed it then never really used it. I’d been telling myself recently that I should upgrade it and start using it. But I thought that if I was going to upgrade Wordpress I might as well make some upgrades to my server and the other things on it. But upgrading my server has been something I haven’t gotten motivated to do. I use it so much that pulling it offline just doesn’t sound fun. So recently I decided to just start using my blog.

It’s been bothering me having that old of a version of Wordpress running, but I didn’t feel like going through the pain of figuring out the upgrade. Well this evening I was reading an article on linux.com about the WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin, so I thought I’d give it a shot. It wasn’t as smooth as I’d hoped but it seems to have gotten the job done.

I installed the plugin then started the process. The plugin stated that it would ask for my “ftp credentials” so it could gain write access, but it never did. I ended up getting permission denied errors 3 or 4 times. I also don’t think it even completed the last couple of steps it was supposed to take.

After the upgrade I went to view the site and all my categories were missing. Looking at the database, the records were still there but they were all blank. Luckily I only have a few categories and was able to just go into the database and re-enter them. Although I think I’ll start using tags from now on. And on a random tangent, anyone know if there’s a way to do rss feeds based on a tag or a category? So that rss feed only shows posts that have that tag/category.

I really like the admin for 2.6. Quite professional feeling. Now I just need to get the actual site looking not so ugly. And figure out what these ‘widget’ things are….

-Dexter-

So after watching the amazing Dr. Horrible for free more times than I can count over the weekend, I decided I would support their efforts and pay for the downloaded version. That and I really just want to watch it more.

So I goto their site and click the link to get it from iTunes. This takes me to a browser page asking me if I have iTunes installed. For some reason it pops up the confirm box twice for me to click yes I have it.

iTunes pops up and takes me to the page for Dr Horrible. So I click the ‘Buy Season Pass’ button. This pops up a box asking for my account name and password. Now I have an iTunes account but I only ever used it way back in the day with those free pepsi songs. So I enter in my password and iTunes thinks for a second then realizes it will need my credit card details. Expected. So it pops up the account login box again before it takes me to the credit card page.

I enter in my credit card details and billing address info and click done and I’m taken to my account page. I’m sitting here wondering ‘am I done?’. Is it purchased? Is it downloading? A few clicks around iTunes and a trip to the ‘purchased’ section reveals that I have nothing downloading. It didn’t purchase anything.

So now I have to go start over. Which for some odd reason a trip to the my account loses your iTunes back button. I have to go back to the website and click the iTunes link again to get back to the page I was in in iTunes. Click the ‘Buy Season Pass’ button. And it asks for my password again. This box has no remember password feature.

This time I come out successful and a downloads section appears with 3 files downloading. Finally.

If this same user experience existed in online shops no one would ever use them. Seriously, can you imagine having to add something to your shopping cart. Login to proceed. Login to enter you billing info. Have to start over with adding it back to your cart. Login again to purchase.

So much for Apple usability.

update: To add to this, downloading through iTunes is painfully slow. Then when I went to watch them I popped them into the best media player around, vlc, and all I got was black. Turns out they are DRM protected m4v files. So the only option is to watch them in either iTunes or quicktime. Both of which chug barely able to play them. So after searching the web for something to strip the drm from the videos, like I did the few audio files I got from iTunes, and not finding anything usefull I turned to the amazing bittorrent and found a high quality rip to download. So now I have the unwatchable DRM laden ones I payed for and the watchable bittorrent ones.