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It seems that on Friday, my hosting provider, EuroVPS decided to perform another upgrade. This time they added PHP 5 support and upgraded the PLESK control panel to version 8. As with their previous IP address change, things didn’t go so well, at least on my end.

The upgrade killed all my permanent links, meaning that anyone looking for the “House for Sale” page or the Top 10 Spider-Man 4 Villains story, got a 404 error page.

Seems they’ve disabled custom php.ini support, but added limited support for clean URLs in Windows IIS. I had to change my URL structure to accommodate this, so any Search Engine Indexing will be incorrect now.

UGH…

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Playing around with DotNetNuke again today for work and the CSS implementation leaves a lot to be desired. For some reason (open source? – multiple contributors?) the CSS has hundreds of redundant definitions and the code base itself adds unnecessary or at least unwanted IDs or CLASS tags to everything.

Rather than have a single FONT-FAMILY declaration, it was declared on almost every style. Instead of BORDER, BORDER-RIGHT, BORDER-LEFT, BORDER-TOP, and BORDER-BOTTOM are used. It’s really insane. Almost every element of content gets assigned with CLASS=”Normal” and put inside a DIV with a uniqe ID ending with ModuleContent.

All of this rambling led to a cool way to assign CSS properties to certain elements based on Wild Card characters. This only works with Firefox, but if you’re trying get Firefox to display something differently than IE, it can be a big help.

/* all DIV tags with an ID ending in ModuleContent */
div[id$=’ModuleContent’] {
border:2px #000 solid;
}

/* all A tags whose HREF attribute ends in .pdf */
a[href$=’.pdf’] {
border:2px #000 solid;
}

Works great for debugging browser differences as well. Anyway, back to cleaning up the DotNetNuke default.css file. I’ve already got it pared down to 14k (from the original 18k).

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Mike Nelson and Neil Patrcik Harris comment on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

While I would not consider myself a “Mistie,” I did love watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 back when it was on Comedy Central and Joel Hodgson was host. I never liked the Mike Nelson episodes as much, but Nelson’s new venture Rifftrax is definitely interesting.

Nelson and occasional guests record commentaries for current TV and DVD releases and provide them on the Rifftrax.com website for a small fee ($.99 to $3.99) per download. Users can then listen to Mike Nelson and Neil Patrick Harris commentaries while watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Tell me that isn’t tempting.

This site is laid out exceptionally well. Each commentary has a sample and clearly states the price. Each listing also links to purchase the DVD on Amazon and rent it from Netflix. It’s a great idea for a site/service with the right person behind it. The New York Times has a great, detailed article about the site. It’s well worth reading.

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FreezeDriedMovies.com has an “exclusive” rumor on the villains for Spider-Man 4. Their source claims that Carnage (yuck), the Lizard, and Black Cat are on deck for the next Spider-Man film.

Our regular scooper tells FreezeDriedMovies that plans are underway for Spider-Man 4, which were (obviously) set up in the third film. In the third entry, Dr. Curt Connors (played by Dylan Baker) looks at a piece of symbiote with Peter Parker. The movie then travels along it’s path without another mention of that “piece” of symbiote. This is the set up for Spider-Man 4 where that small piece of alien symbiote becomes CARNAGE. Yes Cletus Kasady is coming to the big screen, one of Spider-Man most horrifying and evil villains. Not only with Parker have to deal with the red lean mean killing machine, but Connors is set to become the long awaited LIZARD! these two villains have all been CONFIRMED for Spider-Man 4. There is talk of the Black Cat making her first appearance, but that’s all but official.

Aside for my previous thoughts on the status of villain selection, this rumor sounds like nothing more than speculation based on dangling plot points from the previous films. I’ll stick to my guns and say that it’s still way to early to say who will be in Spider-Man 4. You know my thoughts and everyone has their own. If enough people say they know who the villain for Spider-Man 4 will be, a few will actually get it right.

I’ll go on record and say that we’ll see the Lizard and Mysterio in the next movie, thereby practically setting up the Sinister Six for Spider-Man 5

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CinemaBlend has a report from a few weeks ago stating they have a source that states it is highly likely that the villain in Spider-Man 4 (we all know it will happen) will be Morlun.

Morlun is a vampire of sorts and a newer villain created by current Amazing Spider-Man writer J. Michael Stracynski. To say the least, Stracynski’s run on Amazing Spider-Man has be underwhelming and controversial. Many think that his story-lines start out strong, but never have an ending that lives up to their promise. I can’t say for sure, as Ultimate Spider-Man is the only Spider-Man title I read on a regular basis.

Morlun was part of a larger storyline that attempted to re-define Peter’s origin and tie it to more mystical means. The idea that Spider-Man is the bearer of powers granted by a Spider totem was floated. Similar notions were hinted at for his many animal themed villains (Vulture, Rhino, Puma, Lizard, etc.). The story culminated with Spider-Man dying and being reborn. His powers were altered and he gained organic web shooter (similar to the movie Spider-Man) and his Spider-Sense allowed him to “listen” to spiders. He also developed Wolverine-like claws in the form of one long stinger than emerged from each arm.

Spider-Man with Stingers (Claws)

Seriously, I’m not making this stuff up.

Anyway, back to Morlun. I’m not saying they won’t use him as a villain, but I can bet at this point in time, they’ve haven’t given it much thought. The studios, writers, and director will all have different ideas as to who and what villain they want. Raimi stated over and over that he didn’t want to use Venom unless he had an idea that called for the character. Also, there are too many classic villains left for Spider-Man 4. Just click that link to see my thoughts on that topic. Truthfully, we won’t know anything concrete for at least a year. When an actor is cast, then that will be the first real proof we have.

Until then, let the speculation continue (and I’ll continue to speculate a Spider-Man 4 without Morlun).