h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

WordPress can be like that if it's not set up properly, or not migrated properly.

I too wish there was a hibernation option, Santra - it snowed all day yesterday, and the snow ploughs made three rounds in my area; first in the morning, then around lunch and then late afternoon. Almost lost my footing slipping on ice that had been covered by snow.

It was a bit flaky in both respects, Pastey, and I did it to myself. The original set-up was full of detritus left behind by old plugins so I decided to rebuild it rather than migrate it. I don't know if it was the right decision, but it was a rational one and it fixed a lot of problems. Unfortunately it created a lot more.

If it's already flakey Ben, rebuilding us definitely the best option, by a long way.

It may seem like it caused more, but the amount saved will really have outweighed it.

Well the problems it created are twofold. For some reason when you export wordpress sites, rather than migrating the whole thing, the image library dissolves and the connections between the images and the posts break. The images still show in the posts, but they don't show in the previews. It's not a huge deal, but we are a listings site, so the listings really do need the images to look pretty. I've re-imported the images into the library, and I just need to wade through the posts and events to re-attach the images. Irritating but not impossible.

The other thing it's done which I think is more of a mistake on my part rather than a known problem, is duplicated some of the events. I also need to do some cleaning up there.

What is fixed is that a lot of redundant crap from old plugins is not there, because its a new install with fewer plugins. It's faster, cleaner, more reliable. With ghosts exorcised. Just not fully migrated yet.

In semi-hibernation; I seem to be seriously allergic to Albuquerque, although this may be an allergy to cities generally.

http://www.bonitovalley.com/evp/flash/quiet_orig.html shows a screen capture of an EVP. The image shows the spectrographic renditon of sound, where the x coordinate is elapsed time, the y coordinate is tone (low/high) measured in MHz, and the z coordinate is amplitude, shown as brightness. Notice how human voices have distinct bands of tonality (overtones). In the screen capture, you can see a red vertical line; that is the point on the x coordinate where the "ghost" voice chimes in. It has a different visual configuration than the human voices.

Cleis and I were alone in the room, having a conversation about the ambient sounds in the house -- she's a musician, so knows something about sound. I had taken a sort of acoustic photo of the room, leaving the recorder in the room just to find out what it sounded like with no-one there. I was telling Cleis that what one mostly hears is the LP gas wall heater, which registers faintly on four frequencies, but sounds as a faint hiss.

You move the mouse over the image to hear the sound clip, the transcript of which is below:

[my voice] "...four different frequencies..."
[evp] That's very quiet, y'know.
[Cleis's voice] "Oh, when you're looking..."

We did not hear the evp when it happened. This is called a class 'A' EVP, one that doesn't require electronic boosting to be clearly heard on playback.

Hello all

egon, good to see you -- and you too, Ben. I got into arguing with you immediately and forgot to say welcome back.

I'm having quite an h2g2 night- currently chatting to Sam Semple at a gig where he was the support act, before that I had a beer with Pastey. Only seemed right to get back on the site

I could go into detail over a lot of the problems with WordPress, but a lot of it can be fixed by redoing all the permalinks, and double checking the settings.

Mostly the problems are caused by badly coded modules.

Too right Egon! it was great to bump into you!

I can honestly say that if somebody came up with proof of the supernatural or the existence of god I would change my stance on these things immediately. However those that believe, will rarely if ever, change their view, no matter how much proof you place before them.

It's not just those that vehemently believe, but those that vehemently disbelieve too. A closed mind is something that stops us thinking.

As I see it, at least those that have faith have some hope too

Personally, I believe I am god. But that takes longer to explain

I definitely believe you exist Patsey

Hello Egon

I'll look at (and listen to?) those files later Lil, maybe not until the weekend though.

We had a guest speaker at Edinburgh last year who was one of the people who defined and created the mp3 algorithm - could I pass it to him for comment? I'm no expert, but he is.

In the end I got quite a bit done today, but I am tired now, and must sleep.

G'night all.

Ben

If you swipe the mouse across the image you'll hear the sound clip -- it's a primitive Flash file. The image is from Adobe Soundbooth. I recommend using headphones. Share away.

I have a piece of bad art to share, possibly a bit controversial, but later. I've taken a benadryl pill to unclog my sinuses and it seems to have clogged my brain.

For the last day I've only been using the new version of Pliny, it's really so much nicer and easier to use.

I'll write up more about the changes I've made, bugs I've fixed and features I've replaced later, but it's a much better system

I keep in wanting to "like" posts, like that one of yours Pastey.

Thursday, sunshine and an equinox! Woot woot!

I've been finding all sorts of stuff in the code, the beeb did actually build a like system into to site, but never seemed to finish it.

It's a good way to engage lurkers