Category: Site News

It’s Been Twenty Years and One Day…

…since I started this blog! In that first uninspiring post, I think I was referring to NTT cutting off my dual ISDN (64 + 64kbps !!) service or refusing my application for the then cutting-edge FTTH service to my rental home in Sumoto, Japan.

I can’t say it seems like only yesterday; it actually feels like a few lifetimes ago. The first few years, blogging was new and exciting! I actually had a blog before this one up at Blogger. If I recall correctly, back then it required making a Blogger account (was it even named that?) and a separate Blogspot account and performing some kind of manual registration/installation. I helped set up a lot of friends on Blogger and hosted them on my domain (back when that was possible).

This blog started out on Movable Type, which was the platform of choice for tech nerds and was liberally licensed, but went down an errant path to (partially) open source, was sold on several times like an old workhorse, and eventually evaporated into corporate CMS root extract more than a decade ago. Likewise, this blog has of course seen better times.

Over the years, I’ve posted less and less. I still have no intention of quitting, though. I’ve been a full time lecturer for the past 17 years and we raised a couple kids during that time (I wrote that in past tense since they are mostly grown the hell up now), but the blog has never been down for more than a day or two at a time, even though there have been times it wasn’t updated for a whole month. That was accomplished across multiple webhosts, as well, so there is some regular effort put into it. I enjoy the maintenance and the tech side of keeping up with it all.

Here’s to another [INSERT NUMBER] years!

Thai Japanese English Lorem Ipsum WordPress Testing

１か月あまり名古屋に居たことがある。 そこで私たちを待っている幸福が、私たちが望むような幸福ではないかもしれない。 いろいろな意味で、正直が最善の策であることは言うまでもない。 すぐに戻ります。 イメージはマスコミの情報に形成される。 ＡＢＣ社のガードナー氏は、２月２０日から２７日までマリオットホテルに滞在中で、ぜひあなたに会いたいとのことです。 ああ、怖かった。 「怒ると彼はトラになる」というのは隠喩の例である。 いや、大丈夫だ。 いいからさっき盗ったモノを、カバンの中から出しなさい。

รีทัชฮิรุมบ้าออร์แกนิคสไตรค์ สเกตช์พุทโธคาปูชิโนชัวร์ ตนเองเธคดีไซน์ทาวน์เฮาส์ เห่ยอิออนโอเปอเรเตอร์ หม่านโถวเพลย์บอยล็อบบี้ ห่วยคอนเทนเนอร์คาแรคเตอร์วอลล์ บูติกรามาธิบดีอัลมอนด์รีสอร์ตช็อป เปราะบางตัวตน ฮิปโปโค้ชเมเปิล เลดี้ปฏิสัมพันธ์กาญจนาภิเษกสลัมแจ๊กพอต แทงกั๊ก อีโรติก สเปก ไกด์เหมย ป่าไม้โหลยโท่ย ไทยแลนด์สามช่ารีโมทกราวนด์

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

New Host Test Post

We were down for approximately a day because I was coordinating the change while on a trip to Laos last week.

A pox upon whoever bought JaguarPC and ruined a once-great webhost. My new host is much, much better, and I’m paying less than a quarter what I was to JaguarPC. I was with them for over twelve years – the last few years, their service got worse and worse and finally, they tried to double their fees on my yearly invoice, so fuck them. Want an honest webhost review for Jaguar PC? They are dishonest. They are slow. They suck. Great, hope that helps someone makes a decision.

Here’s a test photo of a mosquito eating apple slices:

Click to see the entire Mosquitoes Eating Fruit Series.

We are Cosmic Buddha

Aadab arz hai.

They are not us, yo :

Cosmic Buddha has never charged for music, mostly because we know we suck (although that obviously does not stop others). We have not released music for many years, but we have the Real Media files, several mixtapes, and Y2K coding errors to prove we were first. Our band predates our blog on this domain by 10 years or so, and it’s been going since 2003.

Also, here’s some album art and gig posters from back in the day:

The DRAGON year.
Funk you, dude!
Apologies to Rollins Band…
Third mixtape/ First live gig art
Second mixtape art
First mixtape art
First unregistered music company

Seongbulhaseyo.

UPDATE: Really?

Will blogging get a second chance?

Maybe after FB withers and joins Hi5 and MySpace in the Afternet, blogging will come back big… I really don’t care that much, but it would be kind of cool to see people writing more and emoji-ing less 😉

Also, WordPress completely prevented my posting capabilities today until I installed their new editor plugin called Gutenberg, which really reminds me of early HTML editing software (PageMill? GoLive? Claris?). I mean, I thought we ditched block editors for simpler editing tools… Or are there only nerds and techies still blogging?

IARC Rating for C. Buddha’s Blog Reader

The updated terms and conditions for apps available at the Google Play Store dictated that I apply for a International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) rating, which I have now received: LINK

As you most probably are not aware, C. Buddha’s Blog Reader is an Android app; it’s a dedicated reader for this blog that hosts the spirit of virtual Keanu Reeves (yes, it is most excellent). You can check it out here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.warting.blogg.wis_cosmicbuddha_feed_nu

“dy-solutions” is a scam

This is what was sent to me:

(Letter to Head of Brand Business or CEO,thanks.)

Dear Ladies/Gentlemen,

This is a formal email. Please check it seriously and transfer it to responsible person, thanks. We are the auditing department of a professional domain name registration and dispute solution organization. Today, we formally received an online application that a company claimed “Anhong Int’l Co., Ltd” were applying to register “cosmicbuddha” as their Brand Name and some “cosmicbuddha” Important top-level domain names. Now we are handling this registration,after our audit department checking,we found this is conflict with your company’s using name.

According to the registration principle,we will audit every application of our customer in order to avoid the conflict of the intellectual property. You are the original name owner,so I am sending you this E-mail to check if your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you have authorized this,we will finish the registration at once,otherwise,please inform me as soon as possible.

Our time limit for dissent application is 7 workdays. Out of the period, we would regard this application was authorized by you and accept their application legally. Looking forward to your prompt confirmation. Have an outstanding day!

Best Regards,

Max Wong (MR.)
Registration Dept.

YES, IT’S A SCAM.

Do not reply to the message.

Do not check out their shitty website.

They want to sell you shit you don’t need and/or cheat you somehow; it’s what they do.

That is all.

P.S. People looking down on you love to use the word “dissent.”

beeeeeeatz

Dammit, my hosting provider is still fropping (friggin’ dropping) the ball. This site is going up and down and up and ERROR ESTABLISHING DATABASE CONNECTION and up and down and up and PERMISSION DENIED and…

Anyways, this made me feel a bit better:

)

(From cuz K’s FB feed)

Site Recovery

We’ve been down for more than a week due to hard disk failure on the server plus many other problems that have been just a real bitch to resolve… Let’s see if the site stays up.

To reduce load on the server, we’re gonna try serving cached pages for unknown users for a while.

Testing the WordPress Publicize Function

Since Twitter got hacked a while back, the apps using its API have been refused permission intermittently. Until now, I used a site called twitterfeed to daisy chain my blog posts from my dedicated blog to Twitter to Facebook, but that all fell apart when Twitter security got oversensitive.

So now, I’m going to see how the WP Publicize function works out. Guess I’ll try to post a photo and embed a YouTube video:

Some random photo my wife took in Burma a few weeks ago.
Some random photo my wife took in Burma a few weeks ago.

Random video from my YouTube “music” playlist:

Ten

I started writing this blog exactly ten years ago.

I had experimented with the earliest versions of blogger/blogspot from 2000, and registered cosmicbuddha.com on January 6 of that same year, but updated it manually until April 21, 2003. Then the blathering began.

Blogging has been extremely fulfilling for me. I used to do it because it made me want to go out and find things to write about, both online and otherwise. In the back of my mind, however, there was always a secondary purpose of leaving a record of my life and thoughts.

I started blogging when I was a salaryman in Japan. One of the things I started regretting quite early on during my time there was not being able to speak with my grandfather much before he passed. He got me into university there, told me what he wanted me to do before going back to the states, and left a trusted relative in charge of wiring me 20,000 yen (~$200) every month until graduation (which tided my hustling ass over more than a few times when things got hard).

He died before I graduated. Hell, he died before I could ever really speak with him in Japanese. And yet, his presence all around me… He left an empty house near our university (for a few years at least) which I would sneak into and take showers at (my dorm didn’t have showers and the communal bath closed many hours before I would get home from work), or throw parties at, much to the consternation of my other relatives. He was so well known by people at the university and around town, it was like having an instant upgrade wherever the hell I was at: “Oh, you’re Yoshida-sensei’s grandson? Here, take this fruit as a present,” or, “Oh, you need to get into the library archives but don’t have a permit? Well, I knew you’re grandfather, so just walk right in!” The thing is, I knew very little about my grandfather.

I gather he was a good man, and yes, that is the most important thing, but sometimes, I just wanted to know more. And so, I don’t know if anybody has read this weblog from start to finish… I suspect not. But I intended to leave a record, and a record I have left. The posts on this blog are just snapshots (sometimes literally) of my life and my thoughts, but maybe if you view enough of someone’s work you can become familiar with them in some way….

I was here.

I am here.

This was the first ten years of my documenting it openly.

C. Buddha’s Great Android Experiment

After clearing my calendar for our October holidays, the extra work I was planning to do fell through. I’ve spent the extra time planning for a possible simian uprising, playing with Max and Mina every day, and creating an Android application. I mostly did it to investigate the process for publishing an app on Google Play, for future work reference. However, it would be extremely cool if you would go check out the app and inflate the ratings and press Like buttons, etc., for me, since I’m an attention whore. Thank you.

Link: C. Buddha’s Blog Reader

This app is a dedicated blog reader for my blog. You install it on an Android device and when you run it, it loads my blog’s feed and lets you see new posts. If you want to comment on a post, you use the link provided at the bottom of each post to jump to my actual blog via your internet browser.

Note: There are ads in the app. They do not pay me, they pay the developer of the site I used to create the app. You cannot remove them. Then again, this is kind of a useless app, so who cares? I may eventually generate an iPod/Pad/Phone version of the app that will be identically useless, but it will probably tell you how to get somewhere more accurately than iOS Maps.

—

name cheap

I just dumped Network Solutions for Namecheap because NetSol is too expensive and their site is crufty and pushes unnecessary features way too hard. Thus begins my 2012 domain name consolidation – I have one straggler (elearningrmu.info) registered at Go Daddy, but I might just let it die there. Sure won’t give them any more business after they supported bills that would have infringed upon my internet freedom and god-given right to shaky Telecines.

Namecheap’s site loads very fast for me here in Thailand (90% of the time I spent on NetSol’s site was waiting for it to load), and I transferred cosmicbuddha.com and registered a new one (secret project) in under three minutes.

Here is my affiliate link (I get paid if you buy their services by clicking through it):

Cockroach Reanimation at 2k views

My most popular YouTube vid, by far, is Cockroach Reanimation with Electro-stimulation, which just passed over 200,000 views. The viewing demographic is overwhelmingly 13-17 year old boys who like to point out that the cockroach “isn’t actually coming to life, it’s something about electrical impulses and nerves and something scientific-er than that, (insert insult of choice).”

I have mixed feelings about this vid – it’s brought out all the little Mr. Wizards and smartasses and even one scary guy who requested electrocution of bigger things – but in the end, it’s nice to have a kind of popular YouTube upload that I made with a $1 electronic device and a dead/reanimated (just kidding, kids!) insect: