Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.
Well, I managed to break my server. Attempting to log in to MovableType results in long strings of errors — apparently perl is completely hosed. Time to re-install Jaguar and hope that I don’t manage to nuke the websites that are on there.
This has not been my best couple of nights.
Update: OS reinstall is done, and all three websites are visible again. MT functionality hasn’t been restored yet, though — that’s my project for tomorrow night. Right now, it’s bedtime.
I host three sites on a computer here in my apartment — my old website (djwudi.com), my family’s website (hanscomfamily.com), and my friend Kirsten’s site (geekmuffin.com). All three sites have been getting hit over the last few weeks with the comment spam that is rapidly becoming such a hassle.
Tonight I attempted to install the MT-Blacklist plugin that has recently been released as a tool to combat these comment spammers. Unfortunately, after installing it, when I attempted to access it, I got the following error:
An error occurred: Can’t locate Storable.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/mt/extlib /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/mt/lib /System/Library/Perl/darwin /System/Library/Perl /Library/Perl/darwin /Library/Perl /Library/Perl /Network/Library/Perl/darwin /Network/Library/Perl /Network/Library/Perl .) at /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/mt/lib/MT/PluginData.pm line 9. BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/mt/lib/MT/PluginData.pm line 9. Compilation failed in require at /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/mt/extlib/jayallen/Blacklist.pm line 18. BEGIN failed–compilation aborted at /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/mt/extlib/jayallen/Blacklist.pm line 18. Compilation failed in require at /Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables/mt/mt-blacklist.cgi line 29.
Well, that’s no good. I dinked around with fink for a while, attempting to get the mysteriously missing ‘storable.pm’ installed, only to continually get error message after error message. Eventually giving up in frustration, I decided to attempt one of the other, lower-tech methods of combatting the spambots — simply renaming the scripts that handle comment and trackback submission. However, when I attempted to do a rebuild on my old weblog, I ended up getting the same error message.
This worries me. It would appear that this ‘storable.pm’ is required for MovableType to function at all. However, now all of a sudden, I don’t have it, and I have no idea why. So now, I’m faced with reinstalling OS X, fink, and whatever other packages I had installed on the server — and I just hope I can remember them all — and hopefully do so while still managing to keep the information for all three weblogs. I could actually live if I lost what’s on my old weblog, as most of it is already imported into this weblog, and I’ve got the export files saved already, but I don’t have either a recent backup of the box or backups of the hanscomfamily.com or geekmuffin.com directories (yes, I know, bad sysadmin).
I think I’ll be able to reinstall without losing everything — but then, I thought things were hunky-dory up until this point, too. So I’m a little concerned.
End result — it’s past my bedtime, I’m tired, more than a little frustrated, and ready to go to bed. Hopefully things will look better when I get back to poking around tomorrow evening.
(I don’t think that MT-Blacklist caused any of the problems, in case anyone is wondering. I think it’s just either my goofing something up, a random server glitch, or a combination of the two. No worries on the MT-Blacklist front in and of itself.)
Wow.
This AP photo of President Bush has me alternating between disgust and slack-jawed amazement, and I’m not sure whether to pass on kudos to the photographer or have them drawn and quartered.
For now, I’ll just admit that, whether it was staged or just a lucky shot, it’s as brilliant as it is disturbing.
(via Kos)
‘quislibet’ has translated Sir Mix-A-Lot’s ‘Baby Got Back’ into Latin, and given an English re-translation that gives some idea of how sucessful his translation efforts were. What follows is merely the beginning…here’s the rest!
| Latin | English (re-translated) |
|---|---|
| mehercle! Rebecca, ecce! tantae clunes isti sunt! amica esse videtur istorum hominum rhythmicorum. |
By Hercules! Rebecca, behold! Such large buttocks she has! She appears to be a girlfriend of one of those rhythmic-oration people. |
(via Cory Doctorow)
More and more, Apple is making a huge push into the music industry — and if the rumor mills are right, this week just may be their biggest foray yet.
Already having made a name for themselves over the past couple years with the one-two punch of the iPod and the iTunes Music Store, recently Apple has been exploring various exclusive promotions, such as live performances by bands at Apple Store locations that are later released exclusively through the iTMS.
Latest case in point: Thursday and Thrice, a pair of new rock acts from Island Records, are hyping an upcoming tour Wednesday (Oct. 15) with Apple in-stores on two coasts.
Thursday will take the stage at the Apple Store SoHo in New York. On the West Coast, Thrice will play at the Apple Store Third Street Promenade, located in Santa Monica, Calif. Each performance will be at 7 p.m. in their respective time zones.
The shows kick off a highly anticipated double bill — presented by Alternative Press magazine and MTV2 — which begins Oct. 17 in Pennsylvania.
The music performed at the events will be available exclusively for purchase at the iTunes Music Store.
Already, Apple Store performances can be found at the iTMS from Less Than Jake (iTMS link) and The Rising (iTMS link). I think this is a fascinating way to co-promote both the bands and Apple’s brand.
While it’s been known that Apple has a major event this Thursday that has a 90% or better chance of featuring the introduction of iTunes (and the iTMS) for Windows, according to both MacRumors and AppleInsider, there may be some nice surprises in store for Mac users, too. Possibilities include iTunes 5 (released for both Windows and Macintosh) featuring more encoding options, .wma support, and the ability to “borrow” tracks and albums from the iTMS before purchasing them; and iPod peripherals, perhaps featuring an add-on to allow recording directly to the iPod (touted as being aimed at students for recording classroom lectures).
Lots of fun toys coming down the pike, from the looks of it…
Weekend’s done, time to start poking my head up again. Had a very pleasant weekend — Prairie came in, we spent Saturday housecleaning during the day and watching The Ring (not bad at all, for a modern horror movie) with her sister Hope in the evening, then spending time with my dad on Sunday as he passed through town for work.
Now back to the normal day-to-day…
As of right now — 10am on the day that tickets were available to be purchased — the Lord of the Rings Marathon at the Cinerama is sold out.
At least, that’s what I’m getting from the MovieTickets.com website. For all I know, it may be different at the theatre itself, but I don’t have time to go stand in line there.
Bummer.
Ah, well. As they’re playing the Extended versions of both TFotR and TTT in two weeks immediately prior to the release of TRotK, I went ahead and picked up tickets to the Saturday showings of each of those. Not the marathon, but this might be a little more comfortable anyway. ;)
A minor but amusing goof on Apple’s site right now: in the Top New Panther Features sidebar on many of the pages, iChat’s one-line summary is “Send and receive faxes.”
A friend filled me in that you can now fax directly from any print panel in Panther, which I could definitely see as being extremely convenient. It doesn’t really have anything to do with iChat, however.
Still. It amused me.
Mac OS X 10.3, a.k.a. Panther, has finally had its official release date announced — October 24th, just a little over two weeks from now. I qualify for the Mac OS X Up-To-Date program, too, as a new G5 owner, so I get to upgrade for \$20. Go me!
Not having a digital video camera to play with video bits, and hot having any multi-megabyte Photoshop files to play with, I have to admit that I haven’t exactly been taxing my G5 since I got it. I’m loving the speed, to be sure — but I also know I haven’t even begun to push the limits of what this machine can do.
I stumbled across a post by someone who does do video rendering work, though, and they posted a comparison of video render times for whatever project they’re working on. The clip that they were working on took 6 hours and 46 minutes to render on a dual 500Mhz processor G4 — but only 42 minutes to render on the dual 2Ghz processor G5.
That’s fast. Time for me to upgrade my projects! ;)