I thought I'd fix that recent mistake before I left, but nope, that wasn't as easy as I thought. Public note for when I get back: compare backups before/after July 3. Post table only. Fix mistakes.

Also didn't get to gathering up that dose of The Offspring. I'll get to that.

As of right now I've checked in with the VA group for the NGAP15 project (y'all know what that is if y'are involved) one final time, packed (almost), defrosted the freezer, watered the plants with like twenty water can doses, and the garden until it was a puddle, eaten a quick dinner on shredded lemon, fried onions, sardins, lingonberries, black currents, chives, butter and a banana - whatever was left over, swatted a rare Stockholm mosquito (they're not so rare up North though), checked off the final tasks on the calender aaand I think I'm ready. Just need to take a quick shower, brush my teeth, and sleep maybe five hours until: travel time.

The Northern wilds await! I shall stop by the blog some time if I can and detail the going on's of my ventures into this behemoth and vacant space where forests run rampant and taste is great - if ever a computer with Internet access happens to be in close proximity and nobody's using it.

Have a great one y'all! If not earlier: I'll see you in August.

Just gotta post some quick XKCD genius.

I think I relaxed too much this Saturday. I was recording a podcast just before I turned the light off, analyzing the day in audio form as to wind down a bit before trying to sleep, and as soon as I was ready to turn off the light... the left side of my head started hurting. Real, thumping, pain. I smiled to check that it wasn't a stroke (you never know) but it wasn't that so... what?

Suddenly I was wide awake, but I felt relaxed. I tossed and turned a bit and tried to relax even more, but I realized I couldn't relax more because I was pretty much as relaxed as I could possibly get. Tensions ebbing out, I figured, but it was pretty uncomfortable. I wondered if I'd be able to fall asleep at all like this.

And then I fell asleep, and woke up an hour earlier than I needed, fetched a glass of water, went up, went to bed for another hour - think I might've caught at least a little additional shut eye, and so this Sunday I was in a pretty good albeit somewhat confused state of mind and still kinda tired, thinking I guess I'll rest a bit during the day. If the sunshine stays: hopefully in it's warm embrace, on the terrace, catching some rare tan while I'm at it..

I caught up a bit this weekend, just didn't get to posting this. That's why the intro's a weird mesh of tenses. I finally fixed the audio player issue (check it out in that Last Sunday Post), almost sorted out all of my most important backups (fixing up the last of those tonight), replaced a bunch of old UPD notes with the newer [upd] shortcodes, fixed some non-working YT videos (516 of them, to be precise) by swapping out http://youtu.be/ with https://youtu.be/ (I don't even remember a time when they had unencrypted links), and while I was at it I swapped out http links for old audio (1397 of those), images (oh hey I'd already fixed those), and made a bunch of full http links relative with this bit of search and replace code:

UPDATE the_table SET post_content = replace(post_content, '<a href="http://cyberd.org/1', '/1');

...with one line per character, 0-Z, not realizing I missed the <a href=" at the start of the second area. WHOOPS. Too late. I do have backups but since I made other changes as well I don't want to start digging through those and comparing everything... there weren't many posts that didn't have relative links already, but now there are at least a few with totally broken code. Wonder how I can dig up those. KDiff a database export?

Speaking about backups: I found an awesome program for those. Bvckup 2. It's not free, but makes the process so amazingly simple (and fast) that I'm actually considering paying for it. So far I'm running the trial. Shareware.

Regarding concerts the last week... I skipped all concerts. No time.

Though maybe I did have time because I did see three movies instead (at the movies - three since this was just enough to reach the 'gold' tier for the movie club membership before the member year ended at the end of the month, granting me access to exclusive previews and such from now on), and went to the dentist again on one sunny but gruelingly early Thursday morning (but the visit went great). Filled a mysterious hole. No cavity.

The last concert before summer was yesterday, The Offspring, and I hope to post a dose of their videos before I leave, for anyone who (do such people even exist?! O_o) haven't heard of them.

It was a great show. Great energy. Great crowd. It was also great as in massive. A few thousand at least. 20,000 were interested.

I've had a looong review queue waiting on me that I finally managed to get through this week too, and dug up videos for all the artists I've been to concerts of thus far... and hadn't posted any for. I've sold some stuff via online actions too; sent out those, and was bidding for fifty movie tickets but fortunately didn't get those. They went cheap though... individually.

On Tuesday I went from work early to celebrate a cousin's birthday with some minigolf and ice cream, and ate great dinners at Vigårda on Thursday, and at Sally Voltaire & Systrar yesterday.

Today I've been frantically fixing things in the house and attempting to finally finish up the things I haven't finished yet that should've been finished way back that I really need to finish before I leave. Just fixed this error too. YEAH! It was the CSS though. My bad.

Though I wonder how it's been there all along and just recently started causing trouble. Because I haven't updated my styles in a whiles.

In NG news I made it to the top level on Thursday too, after 14 years of somewhat steady deposits. Cheers to that. :)

I'ma jump off the computer as soon as my backups finish, and tomorrow's the final day, so it's bound to be a pretty intense finale! Soon, it's time to venture up North again, to the wild and free, where I strive to be, where the birds they chirp and we fight with bees as the cloudberries ripen in a striking breeze... it turns around all. It's quite the leaf.

Back in 2015 I customized the WordPress MediaElement.js audio shortcode, and some time since then it broke. I tried fixing it. I dug around and did things but... nothing seemed to work. So I finally cleared out the old code and started fresh.

This is what the vanilla version looked like:

This is what my 2015 version looked like:

And now here's the 2018 version:

The process was a lot more time-consuming last time - mainly because I'd never done it before, but also because documentation for MediaElement.js in regards to WP was pretty much non-existent. Unfortunately this is still the case, but I did a search and found this new and super helpful post, with a new stylesheet included. I didn't want that particular style, but I used it as reference and experimented with other colors and dimensions, trying to make it somewhat like my own one, and you can see the result above.

I'm pretty happy with the result! Thoughts?

It's a bit buffer now. A bit thicker, and simpler (no gradients... yet), but I was happy to see the loading pattern was a part of the original player, so that part didn't need redoing. Further mods may happen when time allows, but for now: the player's no longer broken! Hurrah.

If you want to make your own modification the link above's a fantastic reference. Super easy to understand, use, and modify. Not all elements are included in the stylesheet, but you can copy in any additional ones from the official one (just check your page source on a player page - there should be a link to the official stylesheet there).

And if you don't: this is all you really need. The barebones; essentials. Much easier than the one I used before.

Hopefully it'll work longer than the last one, too.

Most preferably forever.

Browsed through my old Twitter messages today. 606 of them. It's interesting how back in the day you just said what you were doing, right then and there, and ten years later (it's been almost ten years since my last post at least) it's evolved into more of a chatroom than a list of status updates. So much more dynamic. And so much less about status updates than points of interest - a mesh of news, dues and random inspiration.

Almost like a lightweight version of Tumblr.

Also I miss Ananova. Quirkies... remember? There's so much nostalgia in those tweets, short and pointless as they may be. Some places are gone, but some sites never die! City Creator's still there, for one. Still fun. It's not in Flash either so maybe it'll live past 2020 too.

I don't remember playing Dragon Fable at all. But the site. Hmm. Seems very Time Hunter-like...

No time to go Google now, but just thought I'd post a note. If you want to check my twitters, new and old - inexistent and archived - they're here and here. Maybe some day that second one will actually come to life... maybe. Some day.

The Avengers and their allies must be willing to sacrifice all in an attempt to defeat the powerful Thanos before his blitz of devastation and ruin puts an end to the universe.

Is there any way to describe this other than awesome? Tragic, too, but amazingly well done. Surreal. It had the one thing most superhero movies seem to lack: an antagonist that doesn't come across as stereotypically evil, but has both motive and depth, and is strong enough to really have his way with the world.

Basically Thanos is an antagonist that may not be an antagonist at all - if you happen to see things from his perspective.

The one thing that annoys me a little is how strategically the characters were killed off. In groups. In pairs. Also that some of the new, just recently introduced ones, met their demise so quickly too. That and Rocketman's big mistake. If it wasn't for that one thing...

Overall though it was epic - and I don't use that word lightly. It's an all-out, all-consuming battle once again, in traditional Avengers style, but unlike previous Avenger movies it's not just on a previously unprecedented scale - one that spans not just the world but the galaxy and beyond - but also one that affects the fates of everyone involved, not to mention one where the villain actually wins. I wasn't expecting that. Sacrifice yes, but not that.

The special effects were out of this world too. The power. You'd have thought Doctor Strange could have tipped the balance with a few trips in time (why didn't he?), and Vision suddenly comes across as spectacularly weak, but overall they really put up a spectacular fight.

I'm gonna miss some of these guys, but if they had to go then I can't think of a better way. None more noble. Turned out to be a lot of spoiler tags in this post, huh? But it's within the spoiler that the biggest strength of this movie lies, and with the scale, the fates, and of course the mammoth cast packed with greats. Marvel does it again. Or wait... I think this is the first Avengers I give a full five. They really did it with this one. They really went all in. And how do they manage all those witty lines while still keeping all so serious? It's an impressive balance. Masterful work.

 rated 5/5: friggin awesome