Archive for the 'Blog News' Category

Happy 4/20!

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

Today is 4-20, a day celebrated by stoners the world 'round. As 420 is one of the symbols of stoner culture, it is only fitting that potheads, tokers, and occasional weed smokers celebrate on this day; no government will ever make a marijuana holiday, so we may as well pick one ourselves ;-)

Happy 4-20 from The Straight Toke. Here's to another good year of great bud -- let's all blaze one in honor of our brothers and sisters.

Your Brother in Peace,
Julius

Layout Changes / Speed Tweaks

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

With the help of a very talented young web designer, the site layout has been optimized once again. It should load even faster now, and actually be tolerable to browse using dial-up.

If you notice any problems or weird layout ugliness, please let me know.

In Peace,
Julius

Site Downtime / Updates

Friday, February 8th, 2008

We were out for almost 24 hours, and it's my fault :/

It seems that an update script that I wrote hosed one of the blogs directories. Oops.

It's not all bad though, as I took the opportunity to overhaul the site. The most obvious of the changes is the change in layout, but there were a ton of behind-the-scenes changes as well.

It may take a few days before I iron out all the bugs, so please let me know if anything seems messed up.

New "Links" Category

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

I've created a new "links" category in which I'll post all the worthwhile marijuana-related links that I find over the course of my browsing. Sometimes it's a whole site, sometimes it's an interesting article or useful tidbit. Whatever I bookmark I'll post there, so if you're looking for something to read or something to keep your mind busy after a smoke, feel free to take a look.

Love,
Julius

Merry Christmas

Tuesday, December 25th, 2007

Merry Christmas from The Straight Toke. I hope your holiday season is filled with joy and happiness -- especially if you did some planning earlier this year and have a smokable Christmas tree. In that case, we hope you stay merry throughout the holidays, and happy until the new year.

Love,
Julius
The Straight Toke

Site Optimizations

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

Well, we're finally back (sorry about breaking that "back real soon" promise -- real life can be so annoying sometimes), and we're gonna be putting in a good bit of work over the next few days. The first task on our list was to fix the rather slow speed of the site.

If you've been browsing the site recently, you may notice that it seems faster. We just finished doing a lot of work on the layout code of this site, and have made quite a few optimizations along the way. We also profiled the hell out of the site, and have optimized a lot of other things behind the scenes.

Return From Downtime

Friday, September 14th, 2007

Our host had a couple minor issues during the move, so we were out for a little more than the initial estimates. Everything ought to be working fine now though.

At any rate, I'll be posting a couple responses soon -- so if you e-mailed me, sit tight for just a bit more ;-)

- Julius

Planned Downtime

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

Our host will be moving some equipment tomorrow, so we'll be offline for eight hours or so. The downtime will take place starting 7PM GMT (for our US readers, that's 3PM Eastern), and is estimated by our host to last from four to eight hours.

The Recent Upgrades

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

We've made some upgrades recently, so, just to fill you in, here's a summary of the changes:

  1. Two anti-spam plugins. Both work behind the scenes. The first you won't see at all: it's kind of a low-level filter to catch the really dumb bots, etc. It's our first line of defense. Second, there's a smarter filter system that will try and catch the more clever spammers. As a downside, it might catch some human comments too, especially if they're shorter comments. If that's the case, you'll be given a chance to prove your human and display your comment.