Blog Master G

Last weekend Jen and I drove down to Santa Barbara to attend the wedding of Anne and Max. We had a great time. The service in the Old Mission was beautiful and the reception was tons of fun, partying and dancing the night away with Jen’s coworkers. We even partied with the groom’s mom at the after party on the balcony outside mine and Jen’s hotel room. In town from Italy, her impression of California wine was that of Arbor Mist. How sad that is.

(Thanks to Eric for capturing the extra special photo of Max and me with the company mascot.)

On the way home Sunday, we took our time with a relaxing drive up the breathtaking California coast along Highway 1. Of course, we stopped along the way for a number of photo shoots. We had a seafood dinner at Clawdaddy’s in Monterey.

When I picked up the dogs from Planet Canine on Monday, I learned that they were expelled for picking too many fights. Goodbye, Planet Canine.

After using David Raynes’ MTRandomEntries plugin for about a day, I decided I wanted a truly dynamic randomly-generated list of blog entries (especially now that I have more than 700 archives from which to draw). I also wanted to be able to include the list throughout my site, and not just in my blog, which meant putting it in a PHP file rather than creating a new index template within Movable Type.

The MTRandomEntries plugin updates the list only when you rebuild your templates. And I wanted the list of random entries to change on reload. So below is what I did, with thanks to empty pages for filling my need to dirify entry titles to create the URLs.

You’ll now see a revamped sidebar throughout the site that includes my random_entries.php template at the bottom (there’s also this stand-alone version, which is fun to play with…if you’re me, anyway, and like taking trips down memory lane).

Dynamic MT Random Entries PHP Code

<?php

// connect to your database

// dirify function to create links to archives
// that use archive file templates for naming
function dirify ($s) {
$s = strtolower($s);
$patterns = array(‘/<[\/\!]*?[^<>]*?>/s’, ‘/&[^;\s]+;/’,’/[^\w\s]/’, ‘/ /’);
$replace = array(”, ”, ”, ‘_’);
$s = preg_replace($patterns, $replace, $s);
return $s;
}

$sql = “SELECT DATE_FORMAT(entry_created_on,’%Y/%m/%d/’) AS date,
DATE_FORMAT(entry_created_on,’%m.%d.%Y’) AS displayDate,
entry_title
from mt_entry
WHERE entry_blog_id=’2′
order by RAND() LIMIT 5″;
$result = mysql_query($sql);

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {

$url = $row[‘entry_title’];
$url = str_replace(” &”, “”, $url);
$url = dirify ($url);

printf(“<a href=\”/life/%s$url.php\”>%s</a>
(<a href=\”/life/%s\”>%s</a>)<br>”,
$row[“date”],$row[“entry_title”],
$row[“date”],$row[“displayDate”]);

}

?>

With upfront apologies and credit to Dan, I am now going to write about the same things he did today

While Jen, my Dad, and I played Scrabble as we watched CSI last night, little did I know about the hot diva action happening over on the 20th Annual MTV Music Awards.

ThisisLondon: “In front of millions of television viewers — and a stunned live audience of superstars — Madonna today exchanged passionate French kisses on stage with fellow pop stars Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.”

As Dan has pointed out, Charles Taylor at Salon has an excellent commentary (Straight eye for the queer gals) on why straight men are so drawn to girl-on-girl action: “It’s about self-loathing — and the lusciousness of the female body. … For straight men, lesbian scenes are the confirmation of every aesthetic prejudice we hold in favor of women’s bodies.”

Gotta love that Madonna — always giving us something to talk about.

Ahh… the brilliance… the simplicity… if only we all had one of these for our superiors. Just think how productive we’d be. I have to rely on my good ol’ Headlight.com Corporate Online University rearview stick-on monitor mirror to keep me busy.

From A Case Against the Case Against the Case For Howard Dean: Can We All Stop This Madness? on Common Dreams: “Can you accurately imagine the disaster of Dubya having four years to operate without fear of reelection. He could do virtually anything he wanted. Heck, he could create laws that allow him to spy on all of us without any probable cause. He could lock up thousands of people without charging them and deny them access to a lawyer. He could make deals with his business cronies to open up our national parks to a buffet of abuses. He could invade other countries and steal their resources. Oh wait, that’s his first term.”

The point authors Lisa Eriksson and Ryan Harlin are making in this piece is that we (liberals) need to rally behind Howard Dean, rather than splitting our vote between him and Kucinich. As the authors mention, I’ve also noticed recently that the mainstream media coverage of Dean is peppered with this “look at him go, but how far can he go?” doubt. The top story in yesterday’s New York Times is a good example, with its condescending headline, In a Long Presidential Race, Dean Sprints, and sentences like this: “But the presidential-style trip could increase the risk of Dr. Dean peaking too early.”

[via Mere Sketches]

Last night after dinner Jen and I took a spontaneous drive to West Portal — about a mile-and-a-half south of where we live — to check out a super-cool corner house for sale under probate. The asking price of $499,000 seems like a steal and I’m sure sold for way above that yesterday when bids were due.

We haven’t spent much time in this fog-saturated area of San Francisco (oh wait, what parts aren’t?), but we immediately fell in love. It’s very similar to our current Inner Sunset neighborhood, but has two important things that we don’t have: A movie theater and home prices that are significantly less than in the Inner Sunset. From what I can surmise, the difference is likely due to the increased fog (even more than in the Inner Sunset, which is saying a lot), the extra 1.5 miles from Golden Gate Park, and the perception that the neighborhood is much farther away than it actually is. But like the Inner Sunset, West Portal is connected to downtown via the Muni trains. There’s a rather large station in West Portal at the beginning of the very cute commercial district, which, unfortunately, has a Starbucks, contrary to the neighborhood’s “phobia about chain businesses,” according to SFGate.

We’ll have to spend more time in the area, but from our first impression, West Portal seems a very likely contender in our ongoing hunt for the first neighbhorhood in which we will be homeowners. The houses seem generally bigger and most streets actually have front lawns, something rare indeed in the City by the Bay.

I also like that “West Portal residents tend to be solidly middle class — primarily firefighters, teachers, health-care workers and small-business owners, according to 1990 census data.”

(House pictured above is the aforementioned one we went to see that had a probate offer deadline of yesterday.)

Seen last month in a Bed Bath and Beyond parking lot in San Francisco:

I think some people are just begging to be pulled over. With a license plate like that, how could you ever speed or draw any attention to yourself?

Since the TypePad beta has come to an end, I decided it was time to transfer the handful of posts from my TypePad Blog into this one. My TypePad blog is still online as of today, but since I’m not going to subscribe to the service, who knows how long it will be. The service is great, but just not for me. I already have a lot invested (content, money, time, infrastructure, etc.) into my own site and blog here.

The relevant entries from my TypePad blog are in the TypePad category and this single entry in the wedding category.

Only in California could there be a porn star running for governor. If you donate $5,000 to her campaign, she’ll go on a dinner date with you. Sure, if what you want is a hot date and some sex, you could get a hooker for less than that (as James duly noted last night), but come on, this a hot porn star who could be governor. To have a date with her has got to be worth at least five Gs, right?

In any case, the Mary Carey for Governor campaign is brilliant. I love it. She wants to legalize gay marriage (good), tax breast implants (totally), make lap dances tax-deductible (hallelujah), and, most importantly, allow the good people of California to keep tabs on their hottie governor via live Web cams:

“If I’m elected Governor, I will wire the Governor’s Mansion with live web cams in every room. We will create a pay site, and all money collected will go toward reducing the deficit. Californians will get to see their government in action – literally! (Also, we will have people from around the globe helping to pay off our debt, so it doesn’t all fall on the shoulders of Californians.)”

Awesome. Hot governor “in action.” What’s not to love?

(Thanks to Andrea and Matt for the lead on this fine gubernatorial candidate.)

I’m so proud of my babydog:

Common Dreams: “I’m actually quite astounded that he (Bush) showed up,” said Stella A_nderson, 32, of Portland, an anti-Bush demonstrator. “I think that he would have avoided Portland altogether if we had done our job right the first time.”

While I was at work yesterday, Stella must’ve snuck up to Portland to protest Bush. Good girl. Your mommy and daddy have raised you well.

(Note: The age 32 corresponds to Stella’s age in human years. In dog years, she’s 4 1/2… See? 4.5 x 7 = 31.5. Her age was rounded up by The Olympian reporter who interviewed her.)