• bbPress
• phpbb
• vBulletin

bbPress

bbPress is a very lean forum solution for WordPress written by Automatic.  It is a great idea for a quick and dirty forum that works.  Theming works similarly to WordPress – so if you enjoy writing themes in WordPress, this will be easy.

I had to install it in a subdirectory. Trying to install it in the same directory as WordPress causes a battle over index.php since they both need it.

For the most part, you just need to install it, and follow the directions. Here are my tips:

1. Make sure bb-config.php is writeable.  I didn’t find that out I needed to until I got an error message.
2. When it is asking you for the “salt” strings, you can go here to view it if needed: /wp-admin/options.php
3. I didnt read this until after my first attempt, but by following this you should be fine:
   http://www.wpmods.com/integrate-wordpress-bbpress

Mods:

Latest Discussion For WordPress – This will allow you to see the forum posts in your wordpress sidebar

Notes:

If you can’t get to the bbPress Admin Site after integration, just delete the following keys in your bbPress database that refer to the WordPress database.

After spending several hours trying to figure out how I broke the bbPress Admin Site, I gave up and just installed bbPress into the WordPress database.

phpBB

phpBB is a much more robust (bloated) forum.  And the integration is done with one major plugin, WP-United.

You must follow directions exactly.  There are about 30 files you need to edit, and if you zone out and start watching ESPN, it isn’t going to end happy for you.

There are over 20 code changes you need to make in the phpBB files, and the instructions sometimes say “replace”, “add before” and “add after”.  It is easy to overlook these and add your code after a line instead of before.

Once it is installed, you can use various Template Tags in your WordPress theme to show forum posts and statistics.

Theming is also really nice – there are files you can edit just like bbPress.  You just need to learn some of the phpBB conventions they use in the HTML.

Notes

• I couldn’t get the logged in user to show logged in under comments.
• Basic features like adding users by an administrator requires an additional plugin.
• If you have to upgrade phpBB in the future, you will have to make all those edits all over again.

vBulletin

vBulletin is extremely robust, but so much so that it is really hard to figure out where to configure various settings.  But because of the large user community, a simple google or vBulletin forum search will tell you where to look.

vBulletin is not free like phpBB or bbPress, but you do get what you pay for.  You get free Technical Support, and for a little more money you can even get free telephone support.

You can view an online demo on their site before you purchase, and if you buy it and change your mind, you can get your money back within 30 days.

The major benefit with vBulletin is that it opens the door for you to start charging for paid membership.  vBulletin integrates with many payment providers and can charge one time or recurring.

Mods

vBulletin-WordPress Bridge:  This will map vBulletin user groups to WordPress user groups and allow single sign on.  Just make sure you follow the instructions and go to fast.  (Do the test post before you go and turn it on all the way.)

Simple vB Login – This gives us our login form on the WordPress side.

If you want to access the vBulletin user, you need to put “global $vbulletin;” in the login_inc.php and possibly the header.php of your theme.

Hidepost (custom) – The normal Hidepost plugin allows you to hide content from various user groups.  I changed hidepost to look at $vbulletin user instead of wordpress user (although you may not always have to do that).

Notes:

• Logging into vBulletin is confusing.  You can login at vbulletin.com, but all your user information is on members.vbulletin.com.  And then you have to add an email address to your account to access vbulletin.org where the user community and mods are located.

Summary

• If you think a forum would be nice, but you don’t know if it will be successful or not, go with bbPress.
• If you want a full featured forum, no matter how complex, go with vBulletin.
• If you think you would EVER want to have a paid membership with hidden content, you must use vBulletin.
• If you like the idea that you can email or call someone for help, use vBulletin.
• If you like the features of vBulletin, but you REALLY don’t want to spend the money, then go with phpBB.

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http://www.hulu.com/watch/125504/the-colbert-report-tue-feb-2-2010

I signed up for the beta of Blippy.com which he was making fun of.  It is a site that allows you to share your credit card purchases.

You can view my boring purchases here.

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If you play correctly, you can get to a point where you will never run out of energy.  You can just level up over and over and over.

Today I played for just a little while and completed over 4,800 jobs:

This is what you need to do:

1. If you haven’t started yet, choose the Maniac mafia type.  This isn’t required, but just makes the game go faster.
2. Find a Mafia Wars group to find people that will join your mafia.  Send them friend requests and start to fill up your mafia with the highest level guys.  The two most important slots to fill in your Top Mafia is your Mastermind and Wheelman.  I made sure I filled them with guys that gave me an 11% reduction each:
   
   This gives me a collective 22% bonus for all my jobs – HUGE.

   For your Mastermind, you are looking for someone that has completed a lot of jobs, and for your Wheelman you are looking for a high level Fearless mafia type.

   My Mastermind has completed 27,500 jobs, and my Wheelman is Level 358.  These are high numbers, but relatively easy to find.

3. Add every skill point to your Energy as you aquire them.
4. Whenever you can, spend 14 Godfather points to receive 4 additional Skill points, and add them to your Energy.

It won’t happen right away, but eventually, you will have so many Energy points that you will never run out.  I was able to complete all of Cuba in one sitting, along with most of the Boss level.

Once you have completed all jobs, there is no end (at least so far).  You can complete the best paying job, “Settle a Beef…Permanently” forever. I levelled about 100 times today alone.
And just to show you how cool it is, I completed jobs for the same amount of time it took me to write all this up (about 10 minutes). This was where I started:

And after 10 minutes:

It would take a normal player well over a week to complete 30 levels!

Every “trick” has a down side, but in this case I don’t think it is a big deal. Because you are spending all your skill points in Energy, you will be very weak and get robbed and killed more often. But since there are no real penalties, this is a small price to pay.

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After five days, I couldn’t scroll horizontally at all at normal sensitivity.  At 100 horizontal sensitivity, it will jump around a lot but will eventually scroll.

Here is a blurry video that shows the problem:

Additionally, I tested out my father-in-law’s Verizon Tour, and his horizontal scroll is how mine initially was.

I received my new Tour today in the mail – hopefully doesn’t happen again.

I really hope this is not a defect.

Update: Just received my new 9630 and the scroll wheel works great!

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Up until a few weeks ago I had been doing it wrong.  It was working, for the most part, but some things like reverse dns lookups would fail, and strange errors would sometimes crop up.

When you buy your domain through Godaddy, find your way into Total DNS Control.  You will see a page similar to this:

Scary, that’s for sure.

Now, before we can edit this, you need to know where your website is going to be hosted.  So if you are hosting at Hostgator.com for example, you would sign up with them and they would give you the IP Address to use for your site.

Armed with that IP Address, you can start editing your DNS Record.  Keep in mind that this is not gospel – your mileage may vary.  This works for me everytime when I point to a website I am setting up in CPanel and also need to manage the mail.  If you want your mail through Godaddy, then you do not want to make these changes.

1. Switch to advanced mode so that you can edit more than one line at a time.
2. Change the @ A(Host) @ record to your new IP.
3. Delete every CNAME except for www and ftp
4. Add the mail A(Host) Record for mail pointing to the same new ip.
5. Delete the MX record with Priority 0.
6. Change the priority 10 record to mail.YOU-DOMAIN-NAME.COM
7. Add new SPF record and follow the following prompts
   1. Choose “an ISP or other mail provider”
   2. inbound tab: all inbound servers may send mail
   3. outbound tab: all addresses in A records
   4. PTR tab: include PTR
   5. The resultant line should look like “v=spf1 a mx ptr ~all”

Your DNS should now look like this:

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June 30, 2009: Verizon announced the Blackberry Tour would be released on July 12,2009.

July 1, 2009: Sprint also announced the Tour would be available on their network the same day.

July 11,2009: I called Sprint’s Telesales and asked when the Tour is coming out and when they would be in the stores and was told, again, July 12, 2009.

July 12, 2009: Walked into a Sprint retail store and was told that they will not be getting any Tour’s until August 2^nd.  The employee there said that no stores were getting them.

I called Sprint Telesales again and ordered it over the phone.  I was told I would receive it in 2 to 5 days.

July 13, 2009: My order on the websites switched to backordered status.  When I call back in, I am told that it would ship out in 2 to 5 more days “due to increased demand”.

July 15, 2009: Sprint updated my order status to, “While every attempt is made to fulfill orders first in and first out, a system issue earlier in the week resulted in some orders being shipped out of sequence. Our shipping commitment for the Tour remains 5 to 8 business days based on date of order.”

Does Sprint really have the phones ready or did they just push the launch date to compete with Verizon?

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I was looking for this many years ago, and the Grande sized ones were selling for almost $80 on ebay. They were discontinued many years ago.

Specs:

• Venti Sized – slightly bigger to accomodate the double walls
• Double Walled Insulated to keep moisture off the outside, and keeping it cold longer on the inside
• $.10 off all iced drinks
• There is a bulb on the end of the straw to keep it from being pulled out (wonderful with kids around.
• The lid screws on and has a rubber seal to keep it tight:

Although I do enjoy Iced Coffee, I mostly use the cup for water. Up until today, I have been collecting iced coffee cups to use around the house much to my wifes chagrin. Now I have a free drawer:

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Chocolate Chip Cookies Adapted from Jacques Torres

Time: 45 minutes (for 1 6-cookie batch), plus at least 24 hours’ chilling

Ingredients

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons
(8 1/2 ounces) cake flour
1 2/3 cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content
Sea salt.

Directions

1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.
3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.
4. Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.

Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.

Note: Disks are sold at Jacques Torres Chocolate; Valrhona fèves, oval-shaped chocolate pieces, are at Whole Foods.

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2009 Disneyland Annual Pass Options

• Premium (365 days) – $389
• Deluxe (315 days) – $269
• So Cal (215 days) -$174
• So Cal Select (170 days) – $134

Refer to the Combined Disneyland Blockout Calendar I wrote about prior for the large version.

Questionnaire

1. Do you want/need to go on the weekends?

If yes, So Cal Select is out since that is only for weekdays.

2. Do you want/need to go on Saturdays?

If yes, then all So Cal passes are out since they only allow you to go on Sundays and week days.

3. Do you want/need to go during Summer or Spring break?

If yes, then all So Cal passes are out.

4. Do you want/need to go on holidays (e.g. X-Mas, Independence Day, Thanksgiving)?

If yes, then you must get Premium.

5. Do you want to go only when it is not super crowded?

If yes, So Cal Select is the best option since you can’t go during the main part of the summer, weekends or holidays.

In Conclusion

Premium – Perfect if you have the money, have kids in school, and don’t mind going when the park is its busiest.

Deluxe – More economical, but you still want to go during the summer and don’t mind not going on the few dates you can’t go since they are absolutely INSANELY busy.

So Cal – Perfect if you need to go on Sundays and don’t care about going during the Summer and Spring break.

So Cal Select – Perfect if you want to avoid all crowds and can go during the week.

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The blockout dates are additive – meaning, the Southern California blockouts are all the blue days PLUS all the yellow Deluxe days.  Therefore, the Southern California Select Annual Pass blockouts are all the orange, blue and yellow days.

(The Southern California Annual Passes are only available for people living in Southern California, hence the name.)

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