5tags

Digg.com has just registered the 500 000 user. 1/2 million users is alot but how many of those actually digg digg.com? I have just looked on the “top users” page. This top users page only shows users that have dugg a story. The user in last place is number 100986. This means that about 1/5 or 20% of registered users have actually dugg stories. Also of the 500,000 users about 40,000 of those users have actually submitted a story and of those 40,000 submitters only 8200 have submitted stories that have been promoted to the homepage.

500k users
40k submitters
8k submitters with at least 1 promoted story

Today was my first day of school. Because I am not working anymore my day will be shorter. This means that I can now sit down and put my new 5tags.com layout into Wordpress.

In March of 2006 I went to Japan with my school. It was about 1/2 month and we traveled to Tokyo to Toyama to Hiroshima to Kyoto to Tokyo to Hokkaido. During our visit we stayed at hotels, hostels, and two homestays. I have several hundred photos on my flickr.

We traveled from Edmonton to Vancouver to Tokyo on the first day. The flight time was about 1.5 hours for Edmonton to Vancouver and the long Vancouver to Tokyo flight was about 12 hours. I must say that for the price and length of the flight there should be more food. By the way I took Air Canada. We left Edmonton at about 10AM and arrived in Tokyo at about 5PM the next day. It was very hard to stay awake but I made sure I did so to avoid jet leg. When we finally cleared customs a bus awaited our large group of 50. We had to drive across the city to our hotel. On the long 3 hour ride we were very tired but got to see our first sights of Tokyo and Japan. Being so tired it really didn’t sink in yet that we were in Japan. Instead of my talking about my trip why don’t I use photos to tell you about it.

The pilot of Prison Break aired just before I went back to school last summer. I saw the advertisements all over the internet and on Global TV. My cable package does not include Fox so Global TV was the Canadian network that aired it. To me the series trailers looked fantastic but I always thought to myself and wondered how a series can be made about people breaking out of jail. It turns out that it is possible and can also be done in a dramatic and well produced fashion. After seeing the commercials all summer I jotted a little note down which told myself to “WATCH PRISON BREAK”. It turned out that I totally forgot about the show until I heard somebody on my hockey team talking about it. I quickly remembered about the show and was eager to get home and download all of the episodes. It turned out that I only missed six. I used my bit torrent client, torrent, to download them. The second they finished I watched the series and was hooked. I watched all six in the one night. I got home the next day and found out the Prison Break was on Monday nights. I was in luck, it was Monday. After watching episode 5 I knew that I had a new addiction. I watched it every Monday until episode 13 where the series took a break. Fox thought that the show would not be a success so they only created 13 episodes. After seeing the major success they had to get in gear and crank out more to make a full season. It was announced in early 2006 that new episodes would begin airing on March 20, 2006. The unfortunate part about this was that I was in Japan from March 18 - April 2; I would have to miss the first two. I was so eager to see the new episodes in Japan that I went into a store and downloaded a copy of the first episode. The connection I was using was like 50 MB/s so it downloaded in a few minutes. I began to watch the episode but my group was about to leave and my friends didn’t really want to stay and watch Prison Break on a demo model Macbook Pro. When I finally got home from Japan I got the latest ones and I was set. I was back in the groove.

I don’t really want to ruin the series for anybody so I will just do an overview.

Michael Scofield, a structural engineer, attempts to rob a bank in order to get incarcerated at Fox River State Penitentiary, where his brother Lincoln Burrows, accused of murdering the Vice President’s brother, is scheduled to be executed. At Fox River, Michael approaches a number of inmates, all of whom play an important role in his plan to free his brother from the inside. Meanwhile, agents Kellerman and Hale are determined to make sure the execution goes through as planned.

Season one ends in a dramatic fashion and tomorrow’s episode will be extremely good. If you have not watched the first season I suggest that you purchase the DVD set.

As you may know my new web host Media Temple (mt) only supports MYSQL 3.23.58. I used to host this website on Dreamhost which uses MySQL 5.0.18 so (mt)’s version 3 was pretty much incompatable with my database that I had to move. The following is a log of all the changes it takes to move your posts and downgrade MYSQL.

1. Move ALL files to your new host, but keep your wp-config.php to connect to the old database. If it is localhost then you are going to have to find the IP address or alternate hostname.
2. Set your feed to output 100 posts (or however many posts you have)
3. Go File > Save - and save the feed.xml file
4. Now go back into the wp-config.php file and type in the new database information
5. You will now have 1 HELLO WORLD post. You can delete it. In the Wordpress admin go to IMPORT > RSS. Upload the feed.xml file you downloaded.

PROBLEMS

If you use the above method you will lose your comments. There is probably a way to get the old comments from the database but I was alright with losing some of the comments.

5tags.com is a blog about technology, productivity, gadgets and anything else that seems to be cool in the present time. It is written an maintained by a 17 year old named Sean.

About Sean

Sean is a grade 12 student from Canada. He enjoys computers, hockey, music, movies, and anything else technology related. Sean was born in Toronto, Canada in 1989.

Future

After graduating from high school Sean plans on attending university. He plans on earning a computer science degree. Once Sean receives that he plans on either going back to school to get a higher degree or moving to California to pursue a technology career.

Play Me

If you would like to play me online on the Play Station 2 or Nintendo DS please contact me. If you have Mario Kart DS my friend code is: 068799034250 feel free to play me anytime, but I will probably beat you. And I also have to add that if you play me then we are playing Delfino Square!

Web Hosting

I am currently using Dreamhost to host 5tags.com. Dreamhost is an excellent hosting company with plans from $7.99 per month. They plans come with:

• 200 GB of disk space (+1GB/week)
• 2 TB of bandwidth (+16GB/week)
• increasing bandwidth and disk space each week.
• Ruby on Rails support
• WebDAV
• One Click Installs
• FREE DOMAIN!
• UNLIMITED DOMAINS

After looking at those plan specs and you think you need more, well there are higher plans but that plan right there is $7.99/month! BUT WAIT! For all 5tag.com readers you are eligible for $50 off all hosting plans with the coupon code “50offallplans“! Let’s calculate that out.

$9.99 * 12 = $119.88 - $50 = $69.88 - FREE DOMAIN ($9) /12 = $5.07 /month! So use “50offallplans” and get top quality hosting for around $5/month!

McAfee has launched a spam altitude test. As part of this quiz you will have to go through eight questions. Each question will present you with two websites and you have to determine which of the two would be the most likely to resell or redistribute their email information and other personal details. You can check it out by clicking here.

Tags: spam, quiz, mcafee

The viewers of 5tags.com will be treated with a new layout. The new layout will launch within the next two weeks if my schedule holds up and the beta testing works. I have a rough mockup below. I am open to all suggestions. I want to focus on two things.

1. user/viewer pleasure/enjoyment
2. 100% semantic code

I may base the design off of k2 or may write it all from scratch.

Tags: css, xhtml, layout, template, wordpress

Jamaican sprint runner Asafa Powell tied the 100 metre word record of 9.77 seconds. The other man to hold the 9.77 second record is Justin Gatlin. Asafa’s record equalling run took place at the Golden League metting in Zurich on Friday, August 18, 2006.

There is a You Tube video of the race here.

Tags: powell, asafa, run, running, sprint, zurich