Blog

Site updates and anything else related to the technology of blogging and my site(s).

Getting pissy…

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Grrrrrr!

Would everyone mind too terribly switching over to web browsers that actually support CSS layout declarations properly? Mozilla, Netscape, Chimera, whatever.

I’m working on redesigning WudiVisions, my photoblog. I’ve got the basic concept for the main page right how I want it, save a little bit of tweaking on the fonts…

…as long as you’re viewing it in a browser that has some idea how to render things correctly, at least. Notably absent from this list is Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari — dammit, pretty much any browser that doesn’t use the Gecko layout engine.

Not sure where I want to go from here. I like the concept I’ve been working with, dammit, and don’t really want to have to find something else. So for the moment, I’m just going to stomp around, whine, bitch, and moan for a few minutes. Maybe I’ll feel better after a good tempertantrum.

Colors aren't my strongpoint

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I’m experimenting with different colorschemes for the site. On the bright side, this is very easy to do — just a few changes in the CSS for the site and the whole thing changes.

On the downside, colors outside of black and white just aren’t my strong suit. ;) So this may go on for the next few days until I find something I settle on. Bear with me…

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.

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.

Abuse my taste in music

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Being silly here. ;) Feel like harassing me about what I listen to? Here’s the place to do it….

The last ten tracks I’ve listened to in iTunes are:

This feature is no longer active, as a consequence of the move to TypePad. Sorry!

Feel free to use the comment form to praise or condemn me — or if you’re feeling rich and/or adventuresome, use the links to Amazon and pick up something new to listen to!

(This is inspired by the playlist comment feature on Phil Ringnalda’s site.)