Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Switch to MySQL

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After struggling with things for a few hours tonight, I’ve managed to succesfully convert the database backend for MovableType to MySQL.

What does this mean? Well…good question. For you, the end-user, not much, though as MySQL is supposed to be a bit faster, posting comments might be a bit more responsive than it was before. For me as the author/administrator, it should mean a bit more speed when creating/editing entries, and a lot more options as far as what I can do on a design/implementation level.

At least, that’s the theory. If nothing else, according to one of the moderators of the MovableType Support Forums, “If you have the choice, pick mysql. :) A little faster, more stable, easy to browse the database….” Good enough for me!

BlogFodder

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Here’s an interesting idea — BlogFodder, a daily e-mail with a short snippet of text intended to (hopefully) inspire musings, thoughts, and possibly future weblog posts. Meg’s likening it to the old school exercises where a class was given a single topic or title and ended up creating umpteen different stories seems right on target. Worth keeping an eye on, at least.

Ten-minute Two Towers

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A hilarious parody of the movie version of The Two Towers. Many thanks to d kitty for posting this!

The Ten-Minute Two Towers

Author: Molly J. Ringwraith (a.k.a. Molly Winter, Molly J. Ringle….)

Rating: PG-13

Summary: A somewhat condensed parody version of the film ‘The Two Towers.’

Disclaimer: The Tolkien characters are not of my creation.

Author’s notes: Feel free to send this to your friends, but please keep my name on it! If you want to include it in some official or semi-official publication (webzine, newsletter, periodical, press package, what have you), then please contact me first, because I think I might be entitled to a cut of the profits or something. ;)

Also: I loved this movie. Deeply, truly. Please keep that on record. But I have to write parody for everything, so here goes….

CARADHRAS

GANDALF: Isn’t it odd how we fell for about three miles, and yet we ended up on top of a mountain?

BALROG: Who cares. It’s freaking cold up here. I give up.

GANDALF: Cool. I think I’ll go buy myself something white. White is supposed to be the new black this year…

EMYN MUIL

SAM and FRODO are sitting together on a rock. SAM stretches, and drops his arm around FRODO’s shoulders.

SAM: So, sir. Finally it’s just you and me.

FRODO: “Finally”? What do you mean?

SAM: Oh, uh…nothing…

FRODO: Well, you’re wrong. We’ve got company.

GOLLUM flies out of the rocks and pounces on FRODO.

SAM: Hey! Wait your turn!

SAM and FRODO tie up GOLLUM.

GOLLUM: No! Smeagol not into ropes, nassty kinky hobbitses.

FRODO: We just want you to take us to Mordor, you sicko.

GOLLUM: Mordor? Hobbitses having little Goth phase, maybe? Very angsssty, wanting to go to Mordor, yes yes. Can Smeagol offer black eyeliner to angsssty hobbitses?

SAM: You stop talking to Mr. — hmm. (to FRODO) You know, you wouldn’t look half bad in eyeliner.

RIDDERMARK

EOMER: Hi! Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one. An elf, a man, and a dwarf walk into the Riddermark…

LEGOLAS: Ooh! And the elf shoots arrows through this git who rides up on a horse. Yeah, I have heard it! That’s one of my favorites.

ARAGORN: Down, Legolas. Hey, have you folks seen a couple little guys, about this high…?

EOMER: Nope. Oh! Unless they were in that pile of corpses we burned.

ARAGORN: Thank you; that’s…useful…

EOMER: Yeah; my bad. Here, have some horses.

FANGORN FOREST

MERRY: Yay! We escaped the Uruk-hai!

PIPPIN: Uh, Merry? That tree is checking you out.

TREEBEARD: Hoom! Furry lawn ornaments!

TREEBEARD picks up MERRY and PIPPIN and carts them off.

FANGORN FOREST (next day)

GANDALF: Hey, kids. Miss me?

ARAGORN: Gandalf! You’re alive!

LEGOLAS: I almost had a facial expression from the joy of it!

EDORAS

MOLLY: A lot of political maneuvering takes place here. Let’s see if I can summarize in ten lines or less.

THEODEN: I have ash all over my face and cannot speak for myself.

GRIMA: That’s the way I like it.

GANDALF: Be blinded by my new robes! Recover your smooth complexion and your senses!

THEODEN: Hurrah! I am me again! But, damn, my son’s dead.

GRIMA: Hmm. I better run.

ARAGORN: Good work, sire. Now collect your people and skedaddle to Helm’s Deep.

EOWYN: Hal-lo, handsome!

ARAGORN: Hi. You handle pointy things very well.

EOWYN: Yes. My only fear is dying a virgin. Hint, hint.

ARAGORN: Okay! Well, let’s move along.

EN ROUTE TO HELM’S DEEP

LEGOLAS: Wargs!

LEGOLAS and other warriors start slinging arrows and jumping onto horses.

GIMLI: What was that God-awful noise?

LEGOLAS: I’m guessing…wargs dying.

ARAGORN: Actually, it was Legolas’s fangirl contingent, shrieking in delight at his horseback-riding tricks.

GIMLI: Ugh, that’s sickening. Ooh, Aragorn, watch out! Cliff!

ARAGORN falls off cliff.

LEGOLAS: No! This is unbearable! I almost had another facial expression!

ITHILIEN

SAM: Gollum is such a freak.

FRODO: Yeah, well, you’re a jerk.

SAM: What? He is a freak.

FRODO: Whatever, Sam. Want some cheese with your whine?

SAM: Why are you picking on me?

FRODO: I’m so sick of listening to you. It’s always nag, nag, nag. I didn’t ask you to come along, you know.

SAM: What the hell?

FRODO: Shut up. Screw you. Go away.

SAM: What happened to the magic, Mr. Frodo? We used to stay up till dawn, laughing, talking, sharing…

FRODO: Oh, spare me.

FRODO stomps off.

RIVENDELL

ARAGORN finds himself in RIVENDELL with ARWEN lying on top of him.

ARAGORN: Hmm. This must be a dream.

ARWEN: Why do you say that?

ARAGORN: Because you’re not even supposed to be in this book.

ARWEN: Don’t be mean. I’ll tell Daddy.

ARAGORN: Whatever. Wake me up, would you? Since it’s not really you licking my face, I have the awful suspicion it’s a horse. Or maybe Gimli.

HELM’S DEEP

ARAGORN arrives and collides with LEGOLAS.

LEGOLAS: Oh, good heavens. You look terrible. You are not wearing that to the battle tonight, are you? And your hair! What will we do with you?

ARAGORN: Nice to see you, too.

RIVENDELL

GALADRIEL: Hello? Is this Elrond?

ELROND: Yes, speaking.

GALADRIEL: Hi Elrond; it’s Galadriel.

ELROND: Hey, girl. Where are you?

GALADRIEL: In Lothlorien; where else would I be? Listen, I really wanted to talk to you about Frodo.

ELROND: Yeah, I’ve been wondering about him lately.

GALADRIEL: He and Aragorn have so much stuff to do.

ELROND: I know! And Aragorn’s being such a wiener, I’m not even sure I want him to marry my daughter…

GALADRIEL: Did you see his hair the other week? Hello, greaseball.

ELROND: And does he, like, only have that one shirt? Humans are so gross. Hang on; I’m getting another telepathy call.

GANDALF: Hello? Hello? Elrond?

GALADRIEL: Gandalf? Is that you?

ELROND: Gandalf! Hey buddy!

GANDALF: Do you have me on three-way telepathy calling? I hate that.

ELROND: Yeah, sorry. I was talking to Galadriel. Hey, didn’t you die or something?

GANDALF: No, you twit. Now quit gossiping and listen. There’s a war about to start at Helm’s Deep.

GALADRIEL: Yeah, and?

GANDALF: And they need your help, moron.

GALADRIEL: (exaggerated sigh) Fine, whatever. I’ll send Haldir or something. He’s expendable.

HELM’S DEEP

LEGOLAS: This is going to be most unpleasant. Hundreds of people will die.

ARAGORN: Thank you, Captain Obvious.

LEGOLAS: You’re just jealous because I’m pretty.

ARAGORN: You’re just jealous because I’m going to be king.

LEGOLAS: You can bite my ass.

ARAGORN: Hey, blow me.

(Ten minutes later)

LEGOLAS: I didn’t mean that.

ARAGORN: It’s okay. Me neither.

LEGOLAS: Kiss and make up?

ARAGORN: How about I squeeze your shoulder in a very special way?

FANGORN FOREST

PIPPIN: So we’re still riding on this tree bloke’s shoulders…

MERRY: Uh-huh. I have splinters in places you don’t even want to imagine.

ITHILIEN

SAM seasons their rabbit stew as GOLLUM watches.

GOLLUM: Ssstupid fat hobbit! Using sage in stew like thisss!

SAM: What’s your problem? Sage brings out the flavor.

GOLLUM: Smeagol would use nice mix of rosemary and lavender, yess, precious.

FRODO: Hey, you guys? Something’s out there in the forest.

SAM: Rosemary? Hm, maybe. But you know what would be good with this, is a basic bechamel sauce with some dill.

GOLLUM: Sssimple hobbit; anyone makesss bechamel. Vichyssoise much tastier and more difficult; yes…

FRODO: Hello? Guys? Seriously, someone’s coming.

SAM: Now, if you only found us some eggs, I could make crepes, wrap up the meat, drizzle the juices over it with a little bit of blackcurrant chutney…

FRODO: Hey, you guys, look! It’s Martha Stewart!

GOLLUM: Where?

SAM: Where?

FRODO: Now that I have your attention, may I point out the Oliphaunt that’s about to step on us?

FARAMIR: Look! Strange little men! Let’s take them home.

FARAMIR blindfolds SAM and FRODO and hauls them away.

HELM’S DEEP

ROHIRRIM GUARD: Sire, there are some really femmy people at the gate. They have bows.

ARAGORN: Those are Elves. Let them in.

ROHIRRIM GUARD: Oh! Elves! Wow, I didn’t expect that.

PEOPLE WHO READ THE BOOK: Neither did I…

GIMLI: Arr! I’m funny because I’m short.

LEGOLAS: I’m funny because I make fun of how short you are!

HENNETH ANNUN

FARAMIR: So, who are you, exactly?

FRODO: I’m Frodo. This is Sam.

FARAMIR: Your…image consultant?

SAM: His gardener.

FARAMIR: Ohh, like in a ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ kind of way?

SAM: Exactly.

FRODO: Righ—What??

HELM’S DEEP

ARAGORN: This siege is lasting forever. These poor people…

LEGOLAS: We will fight to the death. We will not fail you.

ARAGORN: Oh, not you guys — I meant the audience.

GIMLI: Aragorn! Toss me!

ARAGORN: Um, is this really the time?

GIMLI: Yes! Toss me!

ARAGORN: Look, I don’t think about you that way…

GIMLI: No, you freak, throw me onto the Orcs!

FANGORN FOREST

TREEBEARD: We have opted, hoom, not to do a damn thing.

PIPPIN: I didn’t expect that.

PEOPLE WHO HAVE READ THE BOOK: Neither did I…

MERRY: Don’t you even care? This is your planet too!

PIPPIN: You’re very handsome when you yell at trees, Merry.

MERRY: Am I? Thanks.

TREEBEARD: Hoom, don’t care. Taking you home.

PIPPIN: (to MERRY) Wait! I know. I’ll bat my eyelashes at him.

MERRY: Good plan. I know I sure can’t resist you when you do that. (winks at PIPPIN)

PIPPIN: (to TREEBEARD) Mr. Tree, sir, could you take us south, pleeeease?

TREEBEARD: Ooom…Damn it, hoom…how can I say no to those eyes.

OSGILIATH

FRODO puts on some black eyeliner, climbs to the top of a ruined building, and holds up the Ring. SAM pounces him and brings him tumbling down the stairs.

FRODO: Ow! Hey! That’s it — this time I’m cutting your throat.

SAM: But Mr. Frodo…I was saving the world…you were going to give the Ring to that Nazgul…

FRODO: No, I wasn’t. I was doing a lightning experiment.

SAM: Well, that’s pretty stupid too, now isn’t it.

FRODO: Hmm. I suppose so. Sorry, dude.

FRODO puts down the sword. SAM gets up and starts a speech.

SAM: There are good things in the world. And that’s what we’re protecting. And up there, it’s their time, but down here, it’s our time…

ISENGARD

TREEBEARD finds a field of stumps near SARUMAN’s place.

TREEBEARD: What the bloody…Ents! Attack!

MERRY: Once again, Pippin’s wily eyelashes save the world.

PIPPIN: Aww, you’re just saying that.

SAM (V.O.): …and I have a dream that my eighteen children will one day live in a Shire where they will not be judged by the color of their teeth but by the content of their character…

HELM’S DEEP

GANDALF and EOMER and a few thousand ROHIRRIM come charging down and wipe out the rest of the ORC army. EOWYN and ARAGORN and LEGOLAS and GIMLI and THEODEN all cheer.

ARAGORN: Gandalf, finally!

GANDALF: Yes, my boy, I have come back.

ARAGORN: Took you freaking long enough.

SAM (V.O.): The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced…

FRODO (V.O.): Um…Sam…

ARAGORN: You know what would have been really cool, though…

EOWYN: What?

ARAGORN: An army of flesh-eating trees to destroy the Orcs who are running away.

AUDIENCE: Yeah, that would have been cool.

ISENGARD

TREEBEARD: Hey. We’re busy flooding Isengard here. We can’t be two places at once.

OSGILIATH

SAM: …let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to —

FRODO: Sam!!

SAM: What?

FRODO: They’re letting us go. Come on.

SAM: Oh. Oh, good.

EN ROUTE TO MORDOR

SAM: They’re going to tell stories about you. Frodo the Incredibly Cute.

FRODO: Ordinarily I would tell you to stop hitting on me, but you’ve saved my life so many times now, I guess I’ll settle for being uncomfortably flattered.

SAM: Cool. Oh, and by the way?

FRODO: Yes?

SAM: The tortured look really does work for you. Very hot.

FRODO: Aww, thanks. You deserve a special shoulder-squeeze for that.

SAM: Did you learn that move from Aragorn?

FRODO: Yeah. You like it…?

GOLLUM: (mumble, mumble)…Kill…(mumble)…death to hobbits…(mumble mumble)…feed them to her…(mumble, mumble)…pain, suffering…(mumble)…make them cry…(mumble)…kill hobbitses…(mumble)…she will destroy hobbitses…

PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK: (loudly) “She?” Did he say “she”, and “her”? Who’s “she?”

PEOPLE WHO HAVE READ THE BOOK: Shut up!

Installing MT on OS X

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While searching around for pointers on getting MovableType moved over to a MySQL backend rather than the DBD backend I’m currently using, I ran across a few good general resources for OS X MovableType installations.

There’s probably more out there, but these are a good start.

Comment preview upgrade

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Hooray for people smarter than me! Or, at the very least, more knowledgable of all sorts of javascripty goodness and magic.

A couple days ago, Phillip found my ‘Live Comment Preview‘ and incorporated it into his blog. However, not satisfied with what I had, he improved the code so that it recognizes and inserts linebreaks correctly!

So, I’ve gone and snagged the improvement, and tossed it into the script on my site. Better and better all the time…thanks Phillip!

GeoURL

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I’ve just signed on with GeoURL, a web service that ties a weblog to a location, so that you can find out who your blogging neighbors are in a true geographic sense. For a quick example, to see who’s close to me, just check GeoURL. Just another fun toy to play with.

(Found via Jeremy)

A call for help!

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I’m using a fairly heavily adapted version of the Hide/Show Comments hack from Scriptygoddess to hide and show the clickable smileys I’ve added to my site. I simplified the javascript a lot, but in doing so, the ‘hide/show smileys’ links on any post in my blog only work under Internet Explorer, and fail in various ways in any other browser (Netscape/Mozilla/Chimera don’t seem to be recognizing the javascript, and just reload the page, and Safari (and therefore probably also Konqueror, since they both use the kHTML rendering engine) doesn’t even display the links!).

Could anyone possibly give me some help on getting these to at least work under both IE and Netscape/Mozilla/Chimera, if not Safari also? I don’t know enough about javascript to know how to fix this!

(This plea has also been posted on the MovableType support forum.)

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Lots of categories

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The category (or, in many cases, categories) that each post on my blog is assigned to is (are) now listed in each individual post, just underneath the time/datestamp at the end of the post. Might make finding older and/or related posts a bit easier than it was before. I’ve also added a lot of categories in order to even further (over-)organize my posts — new posts will get these added at creation, older posts will just have to live without until I get them all assigned.

Ain't goin' down…

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Someday, I would dearly love to hear Garth Brooks’ ‘Ain’t Goin’ Down ’til the Sun Comes Up’ as covered by Ministry. Possibly with Les Claypool of Primus doing the vocals. I can hear it in my head — I just wish I could hear it with my ears.

Browser Daydreaming

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A few days back, Phil asked what we’d like to see in a web browser. I initially responded in my usual semi-flippant fashion, but after running it through my head for a couple days, I’ve actually got some ideas.

To start with, I’ll look at web browsers as divided into two core components, as outlined by John Gruber on Daring Fireball:

It is essential to understand that there are two huge, almost completely separate tasks involved in producing a web browser. The first is the HTML rendering engine — the part of the browser that parses HTML and turns it into an on-screen graphical representation. The second is the browser application: the windows, menus, buttons, and dialog boxes.

I’ll start with the second part — the application itself. The things I’m most interested here are scattered across multiple browsers at the moment, and I do end up wishing that they were all in one package. Key things I’d like to have in my ‘ultimate browser’:

  • Safari’s clean, simple interface (without the ‘brushed metal’ look, though).
  • Safari’s speed.
  • Chimera’s tabbed browsing (unless someone can come up with something better).
  • Safari’s bookmark management.
  • Internet Explorer’s form autofill.
  • OmniWeb’s beauty.
  • The ability to tab among all page elements — links, form elements (text fields, buttons, and menus).
  • Full-featured contextual menus (Safari’s are pretty anemic at the moment).
  • And there’s probably more that I’m not coming up with at the moment.

When looking at the other side of the browser experience, I was kind of inspired by Jason Kottke’s browser integration musings and Mark Pilgrim’s wondering if Safari should be intentionally buggy (and for the record, no, I don’t believe it should, but that’s another post for another time).

Dreaming about the perfect UI for a browser is all well and good, but we’re still faced with the dilemma of which rendering engine to use. Each of the major engines out there (IE Mac, IE PC, kHTML [Safari, Konqueror], Gecko [Chimera, Mozilla, Netscape], Opera and OmniWeb] has its own collection of bugs to be worked around, causing frustration for both web designers trying to design sites that look equivalent under all browsers, and for end users who, depending on their level of expertise, may or may not understand why any given site doesn’t seem to work in whatever browser they use.

So, what I’d kind of like to see, would be a plug-in based interface for the rendering engine, easily changed via a menu choice somewhere. Find a way to wrap the latest build of any given rendering engine in a small piece of plug-in code, and drop it in an “engines” folder for the browser app. The app would come with one default engine (and as long as I’m living in a perfect fantasy world, let’s make that engine an as-yet mythical completely strict standards-based engine), but at any given point, you could go to a menu and switch to another rendering engine, which would then re-render the current page (or all pages — let’s add a preference option to select whether rendering engines would apply on a global basis or window-by-window) with whatever engine was chosen, which might be less strictly accurate, but might be more compatible with whatever mess of code the user is currently attempting to view.

I have no idea how feasible something like this might be, and I don’t think it’ll ever happen, but hey, I like the idea. Of course, in a perfect world, I’d much rather see standards-compliant websites that worked in standards-compliant, bug-free browsers, but I don’t expect that’ll be happening anytime soon. I can dream, though….