Cyberspace

Blogiversary No. 18

Every year our Blogiversary falls on or around the Autumnal Equinox; in this year’s case, equinox is tomorrow, so happy fall y’all! Our weather has been like “second spring” for over a week now, and we’re expecting the same until near the end of October when the temperatures usually start cooling down.

As for the Cap’n Bob and Damsel Blog. we are now old enough to be considered an adult blog (however, not in the nasty or obscene sense). Our sporadic blogging still continues with a few offerings a month and when warranted, daily accounts of significant events such as traveling reports, etc.). We should be reporting on our Eclipse excursion next month.

Thank you all for watching over us these many years and hope to see you here whenever we post something.

A Classic 1957 Chevy Step Side Pickup

57 Chevy Stepside Pickup

Damsel snapped this photo of a classic ’57 Chev step side that we spotted in the Post Office parking lot yesterday. This nice old truck has seen a lot of TLC since it was very bright and shiny, almost like new. It was parked next to another 1960’s vintage Chevy pickup. I don’t recall seeing either of these at the Classic Fly-In and Car Show we attended a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps they were just passing through. The 60’s truck had Oregon plates so maybe the owners are snowbirds or something. Click on the image to enlarge.

CB&D Announcement

In other matters, we need to upgrade our WordPress to a later version in order to be compatible with the newer PHP software on our ISP. Pursuant to that, you might tune in and see a stock format template rather than our custom Stars and Stripes template, so be prepared for that until we can regroup and get the template compatible with the new WordPress we’re going to install.

CB&D Weblog Going Down? Maybe/Maybe Not

sinking.jpgEarlier this week, I received notice that the version of PHP used by this website is going to disappear from the Internet Service Provider we use. Pursuant to their notice, I dutifully went to the ISP control panel and directed that this site be switched to the newer, supported version of PHP. Well, when I switched to the new version, it resulted in a big crash. When attempting to view the site in a browser, I get a “This Page isn’t Working” message in my Browser.

Image: An artist’s rendition of the SS Kalifornia’s Final Voyage. We certainly don’t want to be doomed like them. Click to enlarge.

After consulting the WordPress help pages, I tried a few thigs to see if I could wake the website up, but to no avail. Since I am using a VERY OLD (ca. February 2008) version of WordPress, it appears that I am going to have to upgrade the WP package in order to proceed.

WordPress recommends that I do the upgrade incrementally (all old versions of WP are available) to avoid potential problems that could be encountered by trying a “long jump” upgrade. I am at version 2.3.3 and need to upgrade to the current WP version which is 5.7.2. That sounds like a lot of incremental upgrades but there is a saving grace; if I can get version 3.7 going, the WP team tells me that there is an upgrade “button” that will take me to the latest version.

I do have some time to get all this done, not only to this blog, but two others I maintain on the same ISP. The deadline for removal of the old version of PHP is not until December of 2021, so there are a few months in which I can get thigs fixed. I will probably start on one of the blogs soon and others to follow later.

Some of the custom gadgets I use will be gone since I modified their code to do a few things I like to have like the image viewer and a few others. I also expect the overall appearance of the blogs will change since I do not think the old templates to be compatible.

Maybe this is all for the better, but if you get a splash page saying the blog is gone, then I might either be working on it or it is gone forever. I will let everyone know the results.

Wandering Minstrel Eleventh Blogiversary

skull-punisher.gifIt’s been a couple of months and a few days since the Wandering Minstrel Site went down with some sort of WordPress file corruption. Troubleshooting with the website host was to no avail and I tried a complete reload of the WordPress files which also did not help. Unfortunately, we are going to have to terminate the internet hosting and the URLs associated with the old site.

Today would have been the eleventh year of being on the net with the Minstrel site. We originally started that blog to serve as our primary pro second amendment presence in the blogosphere. The pro 2A function will now be restored to Cap’n Bob & the Damsel.

As for the Minstrel site, we have been going through some of the old uploads accessible via FTP and downloading them to a safe place on our terabyte drive. The files being rescued are mostly images and a few other scripts and files we developed during the Minstrel days.

So, on this eleventh blogiversary, we will no longer be talking much about the Minstrel and that site now relegated to cyber history. If we discover some pertinent images or files of note, we may repost them here, if warranted. Adios to the Minstrel! SI VIS PACEM PARA BELLUM!

Never Forget Tribute – Epilog

never_ani.gifThe Never Forget animated graphic first appeared in August of 2005 and ran for thirteen years until August 2018. The estimated final count aggregated by the hit counter over the years was 94,945,312 hits. The average statistics for the entire lifetime amounted to approximately 20,000 hits per day, 833 hits per hour and 14 hits per minute. It’s hard to know the exact numbers since I never kept much of a record, but the peak hit rate might have been upwards of 1400 hits per hour at the time the counter passed 50 million hits.

The animation was originally inspired by an anonymously-produced PowerPoint slideshow making the rounds on the Internet and via emails after 9/11/2001. I prepared the animation using a Flash® compatible tool and began distribution in 2005 using a Javascript embedded in PHP script. At the time, my Web Hosting Provider imposed limited bandwidth so I limited the distribution of the graphic until I was approached by a Canadian couple who offered to host the graphic citing its importance. Eventually, my Web Host went unlimited bandwidth and I began hosting the graphic locally. Thanks to those patriotic Canadians for their help in getting it going.

Every once in a while back in my pre-retirement days, I would notice a website displaying the graphic that rubbed me the wrong way, but I let it slide until in early 2007 we saw our graphic displayed on an Islamic terrorist sympathetic website. A Jihadi professor at Kent State embedded our graphic in with his terrorist bullsh*t. I was pissed. I eventually figured out a way to embed some creative JavaScript lines into the distribution script which redirected any visitors to the offending jihadi website to a pro-American military website (I bet his jihadi buddies were frustrated with that 😉 ). Shortly after the redirection tactic, the jihadi website disappeared.

You might wonder why I did not wait until the hit counter passed 95 million. It was so close – only 54.688 more hits to go.Well, doing some quick estimates at the last known hit rate, it would have taken another eight months and probably more given the diminishing hit rate. It was just time to phase out the tribute.

We continue to be grateful for those patriotic sites who displayed the tribute. We hope that all patriotic Americans may NEVER FORGET!

Announcement: Never Forget Tribute Going Away Gone

UPDATE 08/05/2018: As of today, the Never Forget Tribute distribution has been disabled. The final count appears in the right sidebar for the time being.


nfsmall.jpgLast week, I ran a check to evaluate the increment rate of the Never Forget Tribute hit counter. The observed rate seemed to be much lower than the hit statistics displayed in the right sidebar column.

The hit counter itself is accurate in that each time the tribute is served up remotely, the count increments. The hits per hour and hits per day figures, however, are an estimate based on extrapolation from a given date in the past where the number of hits was known. I had a back-burner plan to write a script that would keep a running estimation of the hit rate, but that never came to fruition. And, now, it seems, that won’t be necessary.

I updated the estimating script to more accurately extrapolate the hit rate from a known count from a week ago, and, as you can see, the hit rate is quite a bit lower than what it had been in the past. There are probably several reasons for the decline in the hit rate:

  • several browser platforms have discontinued or reduced support for Flash® animations (i.e. Firefox, Chrome)
  • the shift from computers to smart phone platforms which have minimal or no support for Flash®
  • a general decrease in bloggers displaying the tribute

At any rate, we have decided to discontinue distribution of the Never Forget Tribute. It’s not that we have forgotten the terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001, but that circumstances indicate that tribute hits are asymptotically approaching a zero hit rate.

We will NEVER FORGET 9/11!

The termination of support will be accomplished in a couple of stages:

  1. Initially, we will attach a notice to the tribute stating our intentions and a link to this post.
  2. Finally, we will disable the scripts that are activated with each remote link.

I expect the initial state to go into effect this week. Depending on responses in the comments here (if any), I will deactivate the distribution within a month.

OPTIONAL – For those displaying the tribute, you may remove the code from your website as follows:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://capnbob.us/graphics/never.php"></script>

The ffile name may also be never118.php or never100.php.

Twelve

TwelveToday not only marks the Autumnal Equinox, but an even dozen years that this humble blogger has been posting here. We are still at the status quo from last year when I posted that we were not as dynamically involved in political commenting then and still are today. The only difference is that at this time last year we thought that Donald Trump might be defeated in the POTUS contest, which, thankfully, is contrary to what actually finished with the result of Felonia Pantsuit‘s loss.

Life has been good for us over the past year, with our acquisition of a new motorhome, the birth of a second great grandchild and our ability to drive the former vehicle to meet the latter little person. Later this year, we expect to be able to visit with yet another great grandchild after his birth in November.

We will continue to periodically post here on personal events with maybe a little mix of our favorite hot political buttons like fake climate change and what the gutless RINO’s are up to. It is sure to be another interesting year.