Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.
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.)
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…
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! ;)
The result of attempting to open a .mix file with Microsoft Digital Image Pro 9:
Thank you so much for that insightful and helpful piece of information. No indication of why the file is having problems, or what problems might have been encountered, or anything else. Just the computer equivalent of “Screw you, leave me alone.” Joy.
Today TypePad moved out of “Preview Release” status, making them officially open for business. I still have fifteen fourteen thirteen twelve ZERO (this offer has long since expired) discount codes available that will get anyone who uses one a 20% discount for as long as they stay with the TypePad service — they make what’s already a really good deal just that much better! You’ve only got until November 30th 2003 to take advantage of the codes, though, so don’t dawdle. Feel free to e-mail or leave a comment here if you’d be interested…first come, first serve, of course!
A question for Windows UI gurus — why in the world is there a “Search the web” button right next to the “Up one level” button in open/save dialog boxes in Windows XP?
I never realized that it was there before — or if I’d noticed it, I’d never given it much thought — but a few minutes ago, I was switching directories to open a file, when suddenly Excel switched into the background, my web browser came up, and I was dumped into an MSN search page. Now, I’m no newbie with computers, I’ve been using Macs since System 6, Windows since v3.1, and have experience with CP/M, MS-DOS, UNIX, etc. Even with many years of computer use behind me, for a few moments I was completely baffled — I didn’t have the faintest clue why I wasn’t in the open/save dialog box anymore, and was instead staring at a search box on the web.
Firstly, I’ve yet to come up with a good reason why an open/save dialog even needs a “Search the web” button. Secondly, though, and more importantly, why is that button placed a mere seven pixels away from the navigational “Up one level” button, and smack dab in the middle of a collection of navigational buttons? Any other choice in that menu bar relates to actions you can take on the computer — navigational movement, creating new folders, or switching your list view choice — but then there’s this one button, right in the midst of the rest, that ends up moving you from navigating your file system into a web search.
I can’t come up with a scenario or thought process in which that might be useful, or make any kind of sense — and while I’m no UI expert, if someone with my level of computer experience can be confused that quickly as to what just happened, it’s almost mind boggling how a new computer user must feel when faced with situations like this.
Another meme that Kottke pointed out — iTunes usage methods.
How you organize your music can be as important to someone as what music they listen to. For me, with a personal CD collection currently somewhere around 1,200 discs, organization becomes extremely important. Luckly, iTunes has everything I need in order to keep track of what I have, find things easily, and discover music I hadn’t heard in a while (and at times, didn’t remember that I even had).
One of the godsends of iTunes is the “smart playlists” feature — I use smart playlists almost exclusively (they’re the purple-colored icons in the screenshot). Essentially, a smart playlist allows you to set certain criteria that determine what songs are in the playlist, which is then automatically updated by iTunes. For instance, I keep three smart playlists synced to my iPod at all times: “new additions”, “random unplayed”, and “random 1gb”.
Random Unplayed: this playlist grabs one gigabyte’s worth of music that I’ve never listened to. This comes in handy when I’m importing a lot of music (like now, as I re-import all 1200 CDs to AAC rather than .mp3) — as long as there’s something in this playlist, then I know that there’s songs that I haven’t listened to yet (either just to listen, or to check to ensure that the rip was completed successfully).
New Additions: this is, quite simply, any songs that have been added to my library within the last two weeks. Great for being able to explore a new album right after buying it.
Other smart playlists that come in handy: “recently played” (anything I’ve listened to in the past two weeks, handy for tracking down something I know I heard recently), “top 25 played” (a pesudo-best-of list), “top rated” (any songs rated four or five stars), and the various by-year playlists (listening by era can be quite interesting sometimes).
The only two “normal” playlists I have at the moment are one for Poems for Laila (from when I was making CDs for Prairie last weekend), and one for Sony’s excellent Soundtrack for a Century collection. Other than those two, it’s all smart playlists for me.