BrianJarrett.com

I finally got around to posting information concerning my experiences with the Nitro music scene back in West Virginia. This time period spanned from 1993 through 1995 and was very special to me. I’ve wanted for years to put all the stuff I collected on the site for others to have but I never seemed to have the time, vision, or tools to do it.

Finally it’s all come together. I collected …read more »

When Internet Explorer 7 came out a while back I first noticed that they’d finally gotten up to speed with many of the features Firefox had already introduced years ago. I still think IE sucks but that’s a personal opinion that I’ll save for another time. At least they finally decided to do a little work on this dog and try to keep it relevant.

It seems that Microsoft had now succeeded in keeping up with the Joneses …read more »

On December 24th, 2002 we had snow accumulation of maybe three to five inches and the roads were a little slippery. Normally on Christmas Eve Traci and I would go to her parents’ church services but that year, due to the weather, we decided it would be for the best if we stayed home. Since we were going to be home that year Traci and I decided we should go out to eat. I wasn’t even aware that restaurants were open on Christmas Eve. My car wasn’t drivable due to a radiator problem so we took Traci’s car down to the local Applebee’s on Chippewa and Kingshighway.

As we sat there eating copious amounts of food and watching the beautiful snow fall all around us an idea hit me; this should …read more »

My new favorite show!

Below are the Wordpress plugins I use on this site. All these plugins, as far as I can tell, are compatible up through version 2.5. Based on Wordpress.com stats this is consistently the most popular post on the site. Go figure.

Coppermine Photo Gallery Integration

• The CoppermineSC plugin allows you to integrate thumbnails and full-size images into your posts simply by including a bracketed tag within the post. You can also add it to your sidebar or wherever you like. (See this post if you run into problems with this plugin.)

Simple Visit Counter

• This counter uses a database table backend for visit counts. It also uses a text file to keep track of recent visits and won’t count visits from the same IP within a ten minute windows. Shows total visits and current visitors online.

Compact Monthly Archive

• Compacts the Wordpress archives listing into a smaller format. There are two compact options to choose from. Good for blogs that have a lot of posting history.

Wordpress Video

• Allows you to simply and easily enter bracketed tags into a post and display various video formats including YouTube or Google video.

Random Quotes

• A simple and fun plugin that allows you to display a random quote in a sidebar or wherever. Uses a database backend and a simple admin interface to enter new quotes.

Blog Stats

• The GeneralStats plugin displays various statistics about your blog, such as number of posts, comment, categories, etc. It’s got a nice drag and drop configuration gui in the admin panel.

Chuck Norris “Fact” Generator

• Displays facts you may or may not know about the mighty Chuck Norris. If you don’t know them then he’ll probably hunt you down and kill you with a roundhouse kick to your pathetic face.

Collapsing Page Menus

• Enables your blog with collapsing page menus for sub pages. Very cool plugin; I’d like to see this feature available in the core source code.

Wordpress.com Stats

• With a Wordpress.com API key you can track various statistics about visits to your site.

Akismet

• This plugin was created by Automattic (the Wordpress.com team) and does a very good job of keeping spam comments off your blog. You’ll need a Wordpress.com API Key but it’s free. You can also use the same API key on different self-hosted blogs.

Random Posts

• Allows you to display a random post in your blog. I use it primarily in my sidebar but I also display a random post on my 404 not found page.

Reverse Order Comments

• By default comments are displayed from oldest to newest, top to bottom. This plugin allows you to reverse the order. I use it for my guestbook page.

Search Pages

• By default Wordpress search only allows searching posts. This plugin enables searching pages as well. (Page searching was introduced natively in version 2.5)

SemCodeFix

• Displays text tagged as code to be displayed in a plain text, scrollable text box.

Daniel’s Dropdowns

• Displays post categories and/or archives in a compact drop down box.

TinyMCE Advanced

• Enables an advanced editor for writing pages and posts. Allows choice of fonts types and colors, tables, advanced links, etc.

Image Caption

• Produces a caption beneath images in your posts. If you don’t want a caption simply set the “title” tag to a null string (img title=”") and the plugin won’t produce the caption.

He’s back!

I’ve been hard at work lately on the family tree and my websites. I’ve recently added some information from some family members I recently met. I’ve updated the family tree with this information and we’re still working on gathering more. Also my family site has been redesigned. It now uses a Wordpress front end, just like this site.

I’ve also finished scanning my grandmother’s photos. I’ve completely reorganized the photos and put them online in the …read more »

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Killswitch Engage

I just bought the new Killswitch Engage album As Daylight Dies and it’s freakin’ awesome. It’s actually better than I thought it would be. They seem to be able to find a happy medium between heavy melodic and thrash. Funny, when I was nineteen a girl I worked with told me that I’d be listening to country music

…read more »