The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Arthur D:

Much thanks for all the fixes and upgrades, and for documenting them here - it's always interesting to see how these things are done.

Earl @75, arkessian @100; thirded on the Drupal coolness and steep learning curve.

And yes to the project manager - good ones can make all the difference. Bad ones, no matter how well meaning they are, are as much hindrance as help.

Not really good with the migration, but in the midst of mucking about with Drupal, discovered two technologies that supposedly help spam blocking -

http://recaptcha.net/ - An apparently pretty secure version of the infamous captchas. Free.

http://mollom.com/ - Advanced website spam filtering tech. Has free & pay options.

Both work with WordPress, purportedly.

Thanks for looking this up Patrick. I had been very idly wondering who the last President with a foreign-born parent was, and now I know.

It took me a minute to get it. I'm disappointed in myself. Where do I turn in my geek card?

In addition to Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, I would also suggest using Super Anti-Spyware. Starting out, using both in combination can seemingly catch everything. I used both recently to wipe out a bunch of trojans on a friends computer, following a recipe found on bleepingcomputer.com.

Steve C. @ #87: "This feels like the first election of the 21st century."

It feels like we're finally living in the future.

Just a thought - MLK day in 2009 is January 19. Inauguration Day is January 20.

At the moment, making a Drupal website.

Marilee@4, "I think most creative efforts are really just forms of logistics. Thinking through how and when and what, and then doing that."

I've often thought this as well. I've liked to think that if I focused and worked on one thing for a few months, I could get pretty good at it, like knitting.

Here via BB. Best wishes to Teresa on a full & complete recovery and good thoughts to Patrick and those immediately involved.

Serge @ #76 We're talking about McCain's and his veep, but not about the fact that, for the first time ever in American History, a black man is now officially running for President of the United States.

Exactly. This announcement and the VP choice were done to block Obama's momentum coming out of the convention. Had it been any of the known short listers, there would have been a bit less attention paid to the choice. It seems to have been done to maximize short term gain, without regard to viability for the rest of the election cycle or beyond.

Incidentally, http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/ is still up, and points to March 1.

Stephen Colbert should have run in NH.

I got a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 specifically to use with DD-WRT. It worked well with Buffalo's firmware, and aside from a tricky DD-WRT firmware installation process, the DD-WRT firmware also works very well. Some retail stores may still have Buffalo products, but they're pretty hard to find. It replaced a Linksys WRT54GS, which was OK but prone to freezing up under heavy load. If you're going to go Linksys, I'd go with WRT54GL, which is more commonly found in major online stores versus places like Best Buy. The Linksys firmware is pretty full featured.

Those looking at using 3rd party firmware should investigate those packages first, and see which routers are recommended. Also, some router manufacturers, like Linksys, have forums which highlight issues of specific models.

Keith #54: Thompson is currently 3rd, fractions of a percentage ahead of McCain. What bothers me is that CNN reports 95% of the Republican caucuses have reported in so far, which seems to be really slow for a relatively small group that had a simpler voting system. Especially when the Democrats got it all done last night.

Jonquil @ #79. Shouldn't be too long. It's already up at Ars Technica.

For a different perspective, there's a different how-to list (starts from the beginning), and a Room parties page from a ConRunner's wiki that directly links to this thread.

CHip
Arthur Dent: it depends on the hotel architecture. Many places have stacked suites (i.e., the suite is at the end of the corridor, or right opposite the elevator, on every floor); there's not a lot the hotel can do except try to make some floors quieter than others. (They do try to keep some quiet space -- with varying success, as in one of the Harlan-at-Noreascon episodes.) A few (LAcon and Wiscon hotels, e.g.) have a hospitality floor; provided it's big enough, it wins all around, but it requires an architect who thought rather than just running off N copies of a room-floor plan and sequentially numbering them.

Thanks. I had always assumed that cons solicited parties in advance, grouped them physically, and listed them in the program. I gather that that's rarely the case.

Much thanks for all the tips everyone. I find con parties fascinating. I've only been to a few in MN, so I've always wondered - do most cons just let parties run anywhere in the hotel, or do they gather them up in one place?

Some thoughts that come to mind:
* If using bellmen, please do tip them as well.
* Replacing standard lightbulbs with colored lightbulbs are a nice simple way to change the look of a room, if one doesn't mind the room getting generally darker in the process.

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