Seriously, sorry for the down time, folks. I've moved servers twice, but I'm finally back.  Thanks to <a href="http://www.avehosting.com">avehosting.com</a>, my awesome new hosting provider. If you need web hosting (unlimited disk space and bandwidth, even), check 'em out.  They've also got amazing offers for dedicated servers and reseller accounts. Plus, I used to work with the owner, so I know he - and his team - are knowledgeable.

I'll post within the next few days with a nice long post detailing the past few months so we all get caught up, and then I hope to get to a regular routine of posting.  Until then, however, I'll leave you wondering just what a yowling cat, a small black dog, and a poorly installed ceiling fan have in common.

So, I created a nice little script to take care of all of that.  wpthemeget will take a download URL from the WordPress Themes directory (in the format of http://(www.)wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/themename.ver.zip (or .tar.gz, or .tgz)), and will download, unarchive, chown, and remove the downloaded file, with no muss or fuss...  The output?:

root@fyre [.../wp-content/themes]# wpthemeget http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/                                        download/motion.1.0.4.zip
Downloading theme motion.1.0.4.zip...
Theme is a zip archive...
Unzipping... [COMPLETE]
...Removing downloaded archive file... removed `motion.1.0.4.zip'
...Chowning files... [COMPLETE]
...Installation Complete!

No muss, no fuss. The only caveat is that you have to be in your themes directory when you run it.  Future versions probably won't have this requirement, but hey, I hacked this out when I was barely awake, on heavy medication, and repeatedly falling asleep at the keyboard.  At one point, I had to delete something like 40 lines of "zzzzzzzzzzz......" because I fell asleep with my finger on the key.  Fortunately, vi treated it as all one paragraph so '<esc> dd' did the job.  The code for this little script is after the break.  Grab it, chmod it to exec, and drop it in /usr/local/bin, and it'll be good to go anywhere on your system, for all your blogs.  Happy blogging!

# wpthemeget - WordPress Theme Installer
# by: Eric Scalf -- @ericscalf.com
# Licensed under SPL (Scalf Public License) v.10
# You are licensed to take, use, and modify this script as you wish, provided
# you give attribution to the original author, and do not use the script for commercial use
# or monetary gain, without first obtaining permission from the original author.
# failure to do so constitutes a breach of license, and you agree that each breach of license
# incurs a fine of $15,000 USD payable to the original author.
#Non-commercial use of this script is encouraged, as is non-commercial distribution.
#
#!/bin/bash
if [ -z "$1" ]
then
echo "You must enter an URL for theme download..."
echo "The scrit is called thus:"
echo $0 "<url>"
echo
exit 9
fi

echo -n "Downloading theme "
echo $(echo "http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/motion.1.0.4.zip" | cut -d/ -f7)"..."
wget $1 > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ -z $(echo "${1}" | egrep tar[.]gz\|tgz) ]
then
echo "Theme is a zip archive..."
ZFILE=$(echo "http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/motion.1.0.4.zip" | cut -d/ -f7)
echo -n "Unzipping... "
unzip ${ZFILE} > /dev/null
echo "[COMPLETE]"
echo -n "...Removing downloaded archive file..."
rm -fv ${ZFILE}
echo -n "...Chowning files... "
TUSER=$(echo ${PWD} | cut -d/ -f3)
chown -R ${TUSER}.${TUSER} * > /dev/null
echo "[COMPLETE]"
echo "...Installation Complete!"
echo ""
exit 0
else
echo "Theme is a .tar.gz or .tgz archive..."
ZFILE=$(echo "http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/motion.1.0.4.zip" | cut -d/ -f7)
echo -n "Unarchiving... "
tar -xzf ${ZFILE} > /dev/null
echo "[COMPLETE]"
echo -n "...Removing downloaded archive file... "
rm -fv ${ZFILE}
echo -n "...Chowning files... "
TUSER=$(echo ${PWD} | cut -d/ -f3)
chown -R ${TUSER}/${TUSER} * > /dev/null
echo "[COMPLETE]"
echo "...Installation Complete!"
echo ""
exit 0
fi

I've also added a video embedder.  I've always been a fan of the old-skool blogging.  Low video, few pictures, just my words, your screen.  I figured I'd give the other way a chance, here.

Finally, I've added a post that will automagically tweet my new entries.  If you want to follow my twitter, check out http://twitter.com/fyre.

That's about it.  Vacation post coming soon...