As long as I can remember, I always worked better when I had music in the background. I’ve got a couple of personal “theme songs” that just put me in the zone, and cause me to work at 200%! Something about these songs just push everything else aside, and let me focus at the task at hand. Find your “theme song”, and you’ll be unstoppable.

I use Pandora to discover new music.. A few weeks back, it picked a Sting song I hadn’t heard before, Fortress Around Your Heart. WOW! Something just clicked – I immediately downloaded it from iTunes, put it on repeat, and just started cranking out work like you wouldn’t believe..

Find your magic songs, queue them up, and find your productivity skyrocket! (If you work in an office, just use headphones..) In addition to the Sting song, I’m partial to Kevin Rudolf’s Let It Rock, Rush’s Tom Sawyer, and The Doobie Brothers’ China Grove.

An odd mix for sure, but it works.

Once again, another security release from the guys at WordPress.

With no word on when the elusive v2.7 will be released, it’s probably best that everyone update to 2.6.5 to keep their blogs secure. If you are interested only in the security fix, copy wp-includes/feed.php and wp-includes/version.php from the 2.6.5 release package.

2.6.5 contains three other small fixes in addition to the XSS fix. The first prevents accidentally saving post meta information to a revision. The second prevents XML-RPC from fetching incorrect post types. The third adds some user ID sanitization during bulk delete requests.

In order to avoid confusion with a fake 2.6.4. release that made it’s way across the web, they’ve skipped ahead from 2.6.3 to 2.6.5. There is not and never will be a version 2.6.4.

Get WordPress 2.6.5

The US is in serious trouble, and it’s affecting everyone. I’m watching my savings disappear right before my eyes. As a former day trader (1999-2001), I learned my lessons all too well when the bubble burst, and I’ve never invested the same way since.

But today’s market just doesn’t make sense. Real estate prices that are crashing as a result of this economy. We’ve got banks that won’t lend money because they’re scared! My stock porfolio is absolutely screwed, even though my holdings aren’t high-risk stocks. Heck, GE was at $12 a share yesterday! TWELVE DOLLARS!!! What the hell is going on?!

It’s a mess, and we’re all affected in some way. As a merchant, I’ve watched my business dry up – People are cutting back on their their purchases this Christmas season. As a publisher, I’ve watched my advertisers scale back on their purchases, because their businesses are suffering. That’s a problem, as those two revenue streams account for 90% of my income!

So what’s the solution? Getting a regular 9-5 job sure isn’t the answer, as companies are hurting and layoffs are happening at every turn.. The company my wife works for has had 5 rounds of layoffs in the past few months, and it’s not over yet!

The answer – Affiliate Marketing. There are sectors right now that are ripe for the picking, and your start-up cost is minimal. I’m sad to say that I’ve REALLY let affiliate marketing get away from me, as my focus has been elsewhere these past 5-6 months.

Now is the time to take action, and cash in on some easy money. Here are some good places to get started:

About 6 months ago, I purchased a blog that happened to be hosted on Blogger. While Blogger is fine, I’m a WordPress guy at heart, and I decided to finally tackle the project of moving the site from Blogger to a stand-alone WordPress installation. Little did I know that this would turn into 4 days of frustration!

There are plenty of articles on Google that outline how to migrate from Blogger to WordPress. Unfortunately, most of these posts are dated, and don’t reflect the changes with Blogger and WordPress. But I found a couple of good posts here and here.

For whatever reason, I was unable to use the WordPress import function. I came across posts from other bloggers with similar issues. The import process would get stuck midway, and that would be that. I worked around that by creating a free WordPress.com blog, and importing the Blogger blog into that new site.

That brought me to my first hurdle – My blogger site had multple authors, and WordPress.com wouldn’t let me add any additional users. So all of a sudden, all of my posts had the same author! Try as I might, I couldn’t find a good way to get around this. I later used the Managable plugin to change the authors on the fly.

Once the posts were imported into the WordPress.com blog, I was then able to do an “import from WordPress” from my new blog, and transfer all the posts and comments over to the new site. Was it a clunky transition? Absolutely! But it got the job done, and those two links above were life savers in muddling through the process.

Fix your permalinks by installing the Maintain Permalinks plugin. Be sure to follow the instructions on that page to modify your .htaccess file, so that readers clicking on your old links get redirected to the correct pages.

It’s a tedious process, but having more control over your site will benefit you in the long run.. If you have any issues, post a comment and I’ll be happy to help!

WordPress introduced their new media gallery in v2.5, and it’s been a royal PITA. I never saw anything wrong with the old system, but the powers that be felt it necessary to tinker with it. I was annoyed to find out that the default image posting size is medium (which is about 300px). I repeatedly told my writers to make sure that they were clicking on the full size radio button, but time and time again I saw that they had left it on the default choice of medium.

Determined to find a way to change the default setting, I poked around /wp-admin/includes/media.php until I found the code that needed to be changed. I’m basically moving the “checked” radio attribute from Medium to Full Size.

Find the following code in media.php:

" : '' ) . "<input type='radio' name='attachments[$post->ID][image-size]‘ id=’image-size-medium-$post->ID’ value=’medium’ checked=’checked’ />
<label for=’image-size-medium-$post->ID’>” . __(’Medium’) . “</label>
<input type=’radio’ name=’attachments[$post->ID][image-size]‘ id=’image-size-full-$post->ID’ value=’full’ />


And change it to:

" : '' ) . "<input type='radio' name='attachments[$post->ID][image-size]‘ id=’image-size-medium-$post->ID’ value=’medium’ />
<label for=’image-size-medium-$post->ID’>” . __(’Medium’) . “</label>
<input type=’radio’ name=’attachments[$post->ID][image-size]‘ id=’image-size-full-$post->ID’ value=’full’ checked=’checked’ />

And that’s it! Happy uploading with the new and improved WordPress media gallery.

p.s. If you don’t feel comfortable editing your media.php file, feel free to contact me, and I’ll send you a copy of my modified file. (Only applicable to people running v2.63!)

We honor the memory of those who paid the ultimate price for freedom.

Take a moment today, stop what you are doing and just think in quiet peace for 5 minutes.

You have the time.

Think about those who did pay the ultimate price for your freedom and what it means.

We are still the greatest country in the world.

We are still the place everyone wants to move to.

We are still the land of opportunity.

Often we take our freedom for granted.

Often we forget the price that others paid.

Often we forget those in the world who do not have the freedom we do.

To the men and women who are serving today.

To the men and women who have severed throughout history.

Today we take a moment to thank you and to thank God for all you have done for us.

Take time today and personally thank a veteran.