Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

Random downtime fixed

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At least, I hope it’s fixed.

I’ve had a recurring problem for a while now, where at seemingly random times, I’d lose my connection to the ‘net. It seems that this is some sort of odd problem with my Linksys router. Since I host this domain (and three others) off of one of my computers here in my apartment, I’ve had my LAN isolated behind the Linksys router (as seen in this diagram).

Unfortunately, for some reason, every so often when I’m browsing my own website from any machine on my LAN, the Linksys router will freeze up. Since it sat between my computers and the outside world, this effectively killed my network connection. I’d recently upgraded the firmware of the router to the latest version, hoping that it would fix the problem — unfortunately, that seemed rather to exacerbate the difficulties, where the Linksys proceeded to randomly freeze while browsing my website even if I was using a computer outside my LAN.

Needless to say, this is quite annoying. Especially on days like today, when it froze at five in the afternoon, and I wasn’t able to come home and restarted until after I got off work at 9pm.

However, my account with Speakeasy allows me two static IP addresses. I got ahold of them, got my second IP address configured, and rewired my network (here’s the new diagram) to take the Linksys out from between the webserver and the world.

Technically, this is a little less secure, as there is now a direct line between my webserver and the world, with no intervening firewall for protection, but OS X is fairly secure, and I’m willing to take that slight risk if it allows my sites to have better uptime. The Linksys does still protect the PC, however. Somehow I just can’t justify leaving a Windows box open to the world, even if I think I’ve got it locked down. So much for ‘trusted computing‘.

Beginning blogging

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Eric Barzeski over at NSLog(); has an excellent list of tips for anyone just getting started in the weblogging world. I’ve discovered all of these at one point or another over the years, but things definitely might have been simpler if I’d had this available back when I started. Of course, back when I started (further back than my archives go, unfortunately), we didn’t have things like MovableType to help us out…

(Via Jeremy Hedley)

Do you blog? Why?

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My thesis is an attempt to fill in the void in academic work about blogs. Previously in articles and commercial books published about blogs (Rebecca Blood’s books and the O’Reilly book, for example), why we blog has been researched using personal experience, with a few indepth interviews, or by analyzing websites. None of these three ways can come close to providing as accurate a depiction of the blogging population — who we all really are, why we blog, and how we’re using our blogs — as a survey.

(Via Wil)

iPod troubles

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Well, this bites. I’m having problems with my iPod. Normally I’m pretty good with getting things fixed, but I think this is beyond my abilities. Bleah.

Problem one: every so often, when plugging in the remote to the jack on the iPod, or just bumping the connector, the iPod will “short out” and reset. It’s more or less a minor annoyance — the iPod will reboot and start right up again, and the only real lasting effect is that the date and time need to be set — but an annoyance nothenless.

Problem two: iTunes doesn’t know that my iPod exists anymore. As far as I can tell, this behavior started after I applied the Security Update 2003-03-03 system patch. The iPod mounts to the Finder just fine, but nothing I can do seems to clue iTunes into the existence of the iPod.

I’ve tried applying the 10.2.4 Combo Update (even though I’d already updated to 10.2.4 using incremental upgrades, rumor has it that using the combo updater will fix a number of issues), completely deleting and then reinstalling iTunes, and completely resetting the iPod as outlined in Apple’s iPod troubleshooting pages. Nothing’s worked.

Luckily, my iPod is still under warranty, so I went ahead and placed a service request through Apple. I’ve never had to do this before, but I’ve read good reports on Apple’s turnaround time for service, but for the moment I’m without music when I’m not at home.

For some people, this might not be that big of a deal. For me? This bites. Hard.

Especially when some of the people at work insist on listening to “smooth jazz” — one of the few genres of music that I would gladly wipe from the face of the planet. Ugh. I want my iPod back!

Search improvements

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I spent some time last night working with the search software I have installed on djwudi.com, tweaking and improving it so that it gives much more useable results.

While MovableType does include its own search function, I’ve chosen not to use it for djwudi.com because I have a number of pages that live outside of my weblog, which MT would not be able to search. However, I’d run into a bit of a problem with the search engine I am using, and I think I’ve finally got it solved.

The issue that came up was simply that because the search software had indexed the text of every page on the site, there were certain words that were essentially useless to try to search for, because they’re repeated on so many pages. For instance, I was trying to find a page where I’d written up a short description of the MT TrackBack functionality — unfortunately, a search for ‘TrackBack’ returned hits for every single page on my weblog, because they all had the word ‘TrackBack’ on the page.

Digging through the documentation for the search software yesterday (yes, I know, actually reading the instructions is so uncool, but it really does help sometimes…), I discovered that there is a very simple way to tell the search software to ignore certain areas of a webpage. So, some tweaks to my templates to ensure that the software only pays attention to the actual content of each page, and ignores all the navigational or presentational mumbo-jumbo, and I’ve got a far more useable search feature than I did previously. Woohoo!

Catching up, part two

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This time, the focus is on Macintosh goodies. All you PC-using heathens can read on in wistful fantasyland, or just find something else to do — like reinstall Windows again. ;)

  • Enough people linked to PerversionTracker that I finally had to take a look. Looks like I’ve got another regular read! Any site that the Opera webbrowser has “taken the cake, and it is filled with plague and cottage cheese,” and that it is “slower than a squashed waterbear” defintely gets my approval. (Via Brent Simmons, along with many other Mac-based weblogs)

  • I’m probably the last Mac afficionado to find out about this, but it looks like Safari is actually going to get tabs. Nifty! (Via MacSlash, MacRumors and others)

  • This could be a fun toy to play with: VoiceBox, a tiny app that will take text files and convert them to audio files using the Mac’s speech synthesis. It will even ‘read’ RSS feeds, so I could listen to websites on my iPod while going to work! Useful? Dunno yet. Cool, though. (Via Rael Dornfest)

Apple bloggers?

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There’s been much discussion recently regarding Microsoft bloggers, i.e., people who work at Microsoft and blog. I read a few of them (both because they’re good blogs, and because of the whole “know your enemy” philosophy [grin]).

Got me thinking, though — what about ‘Apple bloggers’? The only one I know of off the top of my head is Dave Hyatt, who works on the rendering engine for Safari. Any others out there I should know about?

No jive talkin'

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That was a test, and that was only a test. Hopefully it was at least an amusing test — I was playing with the MovableJive text formatting plugin for MovableType 2.6. I probably won’t use it very often, but it could be fun from time to time.

Unfortunately, at this point, the plugin mangles URL’s (see the comments to the previous post) so I can’t use it to post and link anywhere. With any luck that will be corrected at some later point, though…

Jive talkin'

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This is a test, and this is only a test. Hopefully it will at least be an amusing test — I’m playing with the MovableJive text formatting plugin for MovableType 2.6. I probably won’t use this very often, but it could be fun from time to time. Included filters are Jive, Texas Drawl, Cockney, Swedish Chef, Valley Girl, German Accent, and Hunting Wabbits.

(Via the MT Plugin Directory via Mark Pilgrim)

Upgrades galore

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Two important (in my world) software upgrades hit the ‘net today: Mac OS X was upgraded to version 10.2.4, and MovableType was upgraded to version 2.6. Both are installed, and both are working like a charm.

This is complete geek-speak, but my favorite change in MT v2.6:

MT::Util::html_text_transform (the default “convert line breaks” code) will no longer add <p> tags around paragraphs that start with certain HTML tags (pre, table, ol, ul, pre, select, form, and blockquote). (Phil Ringnalda)

Since I use <blockquote> a lot when I’m posting links to other sites, this will save me some headaches.