Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Movable Type 3.2 is coming…

by

Okay, sure, to a certain extent, it’s all propaganda. I’ve got to admit, though — Six Apart‘s Pronet series “Our 32 Favorite Features in Movable Type 3.2” is doing a bang-up job of getting me looking forward to MT’s next release.

They’re a bit shy of halfway through the series now (12 down, 20 to go), and while I don’t really know, I’m guessing that the new version will debut right about the time the series is done or soon thereafter. If you’re an MT user and haven’t been following the posts as they appear, it’s worth checking them out. Some nice goodies coming our way soon!

Update: The beta is out — all related news is at the beta blog.

Update: I’ve got a (very bare-bones at the moment) beta testing blog set up. Just a playground for the moment.

iTunes “Symphony of Destruction (Gristle)” by Megadeth from the album Foreclosure of a Dream (1992, 9:55).

Podcast 05: A Fine Day’s Mix

by

The fifth of my old collection of mix sessions that I’m putting up for download and podcast. This one is another “theme” idea I had, and depending on how much you like the base song, could be either enjoyable or excruciating, as it strings together four versions of the same theme into one 22-minute track. I actually like it…kind of dreamy background music.

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: A Fine Day’s Mix (22m 51s, 26.16Mb). Tracks included are:

  1. Opus III “It’s A Fine Day”
  2. Orbital “Halcyon & On & On”
  3. Orbital “Halcyon (Hot Tracks)”
  4. Miss Jane “It’s a Fine Day (Exit)”

Technical Difficulties

by

It’s entirely possible that some of you may have tried to leave a comment here in the past few days and gotten an error message instead. Turns out that there’s currently a nasty little conflict between Movable Type and CPanel (a webserver administration package) that’s hitting me.

If you are experiencing intermittent “500 Server Errors” while using Movable Type and are using MySQL for your database, we are aware of the cause of the prblem: a nightly CPanel update of a buggy version of the DBI and DBD::MySQL drivers. See this post on the Professional Network Weblog for more details.

The MT engineering team has been actively working with developer to help him rectify the problem. We apologize for any inconvenience and will keep you up to date on our progress as well as post here when the problem is solved.

Until that’s fixed, things may be a little tweaky around here. Unfortunately, it’s hitting me, too — I’ve got my next mix ready to Podcast, but I haven’t been able to get MT to rebuild and actually display it yet. I’m not even sure if this post is going to make it up immediately.

In any case, the problem is known, and — I hope — will be rectified as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!

Podcast 04: Mission Accomplished

by

The fourth of my old collection of mix sessions that I’m putting up for download and podcast. This one starts a few that move away from the “Difficult Listening Hour” series to explore some other ideas I had running through my head. It’s shorter, not quite half an hour long, and has something of a ‘spy music’ theme.

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: Mission Accomplished (27m 41s, 31.69Mb). Tracks included are:

  1. Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen ‘Mission Impossible (Junior’s Hard/Intro)’
  2. Propellerheads ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’
  3. Moby ‘James Bond Theme (Hot Tracks)’
  4. Propellerheads ‘Spy Break’
  5. Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen ‘Mission Impossible (Junior’s Hard)’

You dirty pedophile…

by

I was having a good day wandering around Myrtle Edwards Park for the Fourth of Jul-Ivar’s festivities until someone sicced the security goons on me. Apparently a parent had decided that since I was taking pictures of kids playing in the surf at one of the small beach areas, I was some creepy scumbag who had to be brought to heel.

One security guy came up to me and pulled me aside, telling me that there had been complaints that I was taking pictures of children.

“Were you taking pictures of children?”

Well, yeah, I had been, along with quite a few other things. Knowing this was a battle I wasn’t about to win, I offered to delete the photos.

“Can I see your camera?”

I pulled up the picture display and scrolled to the most recent shots. Sure enough, there was the damning evidence — pictures of fully-clothed children, playing in the surf on a public beach during a public festival. He keyed his intercom and called another security guard over to look at the shots.

The two of them flipped through the shots, shaking their heads. Obviously, I was Bad People and had to be Brought Under Control. After watching me delete all the offending photos from my camera, they explained to me that while they couldn’t really prevent me from taking pictures, they would certainly be keeping an eye on me if I chose to remain in the area. “We’ll be watching you.”

That being quite the mood-killer, I figured it was best just to leave.

Now, before anyone accuses me of being too self-righteous, what bugs me the most isn’t that some parent might have been a little alarmed about some strange man taking pictures of their kid. What annoys me is the “guilty until proven innocent” mentality that prompted them to run to security instead of approaching me and either asking what I was doing or, if I’d taken any shots of their kid, to delete them. The same mentality that made the security personnel treat me as if in their minds, I was there for the sole purpose of taking pictures of children to go home and masturbate to (regardless of the many other shots of landscapes, water, Mt. Ranier, the Seattle skyline, and the tripod slung over my shoulder for fireworks shots later on in the evening). The same attitude that finished the little interview — after I’d voluntarily deleted all the shots, with them looking over my shoulder — with the warning that, “we’ll be watching you.”

So, I’m back at home. I’ve got a ticket to watch Batman in about half an hour, and then I’ll see if I feel like wandering back down there to try to get some shots of the fireworks or not.

Happy Fourth of July everyone. You know — independence, liberty, freedom, and civil rights and all that.

Fanfic

by

There’s a short article in Wired today about fanfic, with one bit that jumped out at me…

As befits its beginnings, the genre is planted firmly in pop culture’s nerd division. The films most often given the fanfic treatment – The Matrix, X-Men, and Pirates of the Caribbean – wing straight out of dork central.

Well, chalk me up as a pop-culture nerd living in dork central, as my one — and so far, my only — foray into fanfic so far has been a short piece called ‘Glitch‘…and yes, it’s Matrix-derived.

“This is useless, we’re wasting our time here. Let’s go.” I stood up, letting my chair roll back a couple feet behind me. “Dan?” Dan looked up at me, then nodded, getting up from his chair too.

“I don’t think leaving will be quite as easy as you expect,” said our host. He reached out and pressed the button on his intercom. “Could you come in now, please? We’re having some…difficulties…in our negotiations.” The door to the conference room opened, and the two thugs that had ushered us upstairs came in and took positions in front of the door.

Dan glanced at me and rolled his eyes, then shrugged. We’d had to fight our way out of rooms before — it’s not our preferred exit strategy, but sometimes there just isn’t an option. “You know this is pointless, Rourke,” I said. “You can’t hold us here indefinitely. Even if you tried, we’d already called in to the precinct before coming in here, so when we don’t report in, more police will be on the way.”

Rourke leaned back in his chair, tapping the table with his pen. “Maybe,” he said, “but you don’t play this game as long as I have without taking a few risks when necessary. We have a little time, at least, before your superiors start to get restless. So may I suggest, gentlemen,” — the pen stopped tapping as he leaned forward again — “that you sit back down.”

Okay, while it’s not likely to win any awards, it’s not too shabby, either. Feel free to give it a look if you haven’t seen it before.

Podcast 03: Difficult Listening Hour 04

by

Number three of my old collection of mix sessions that I’m putting up for download and podcast. The keen-eyed might notice that we’ve jumped straight from DLH02 to DLH04. There is a DLH03, but I’ve decided to hold off on posting that one just yet as, quite honestly, the mixing in the current version of DLH03…well, it sucks. Very train wreck-y.

I was hoping to be able to re-mix DHL03 last night so that I could continue posting these in order, but I’m still figuring out the mixing software I have and, well, apparently I didn’t do something quite right.

In the meantime, though, this one’s in good shape. It’s also the longest of the mixes I’ve put up so far, very nearly a full hour and a quarter.

Standard disclaimer: All the mixes I’m posting were mixed ‘live’ — running a Pioneer dual CD mixer directly into my computer and recording straight to .mp3 — and have had no post-mix editing done in the computer. As such, they’re not flawless, but they’re not bad, either, if I do say so myself.

Here’s the link: Difficult Listening Hour 04 (1h 14m 27s, 85.39Mb). Tracks included are:

  1. God Within ‘Raincry (Submerged)’
  2. Jaydee ‘Plastic Dreams’
  3. Snitzer & McCoy vs. Humate ‘Oh My Darling I Love You (Heavy)’
  4. Basco ‘The Beat Goes On’
  5. Lo Fidelity All Stars ‘Lazer Dip Sheep Funk’
  6. Freestylers ‘Drop the Boom’
  7. Freestylers ‘Don’t Stop’
  8. Len ‘Man of the Year’
  9. Toxic Twins feat. The Dust Brothers ‘I’ll House You (Toxik Acid Vybe and Phunky Bass)’
  10. Cirrus ‘Back on a Mission (DJ Dan)’
  11. DJ Supreme ‘The Wildstyle (Klubbheads)’
  12. Kornholio ‘Friction (Hot Tracks)’

OpinionOutpost comment spam

by

Note: On 10/27/2005, I received an apology e-mail from the person who left the comment that originally prompted this post. I’ve accepted his apology, and have removed his name and contact information from this post. Mistakes happen, but Opinion Outpost does appear to be on the level.

[redacted] —

Today I received the following comment on my weblog. The comment was posted to an old entry (a technique often used to “hide” information, as it is less likely to be noticed by site owners), had nothing to do with the subject of the entry, and was nothing more than an unsolicited advertisement — in short, it was spam.

Read more