Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.
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)
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, andblockquote). (Phil Ringnalda)
Since I use <blockquote> a lot when I’m posting links to other sites, this will save me some headaches.
Thanks to a comment answering a question of Jonathon’s, I’m about 95% sure that the cookies for djwudi.com are finally being set correctly, so that the comment forms will actually remember your information, instead of just teasing you with the possibility that they might remember one day if they feel like it.
Turns out it was just six characters I needed to add to the JavaScript code in the template. Sheez.
In Scott’s words from his post on Jonathon’s page (emphasis mine):
The cookie code does not pass a path, so the browser by default make the path that of the calling page.
In other words, the code really was setting the cookies — but only for one page at a time. This led to some of the confusion, where both Dyanna and I thought it was working at first, then it wasn’t working again. We’d leave a comment and the cookie would get set for that page, so when the page reloaded, our info was there, and it looked like it worked. But then, as soon as we went to another page, the info was lost again.
Luckily, the fix is easy enough:
If you want the cookies to apply to the entire site, you can adjust the code to pass the path ‘/’ as a parameter…
function rememberMe (f) { var now = new Date(); fixDate(now); now.setTime(now.getTime() + 365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000); setCookie('mtcmtauth', f.author.value, now, <strong>'/'</strong>, HOST, ''); setCookie('mtcmtmail', f.email.value, now, <strong>'/'</strong>, HOST, ''); setCookie('mtcmthome', f.url.value, now, <strong>'/'</strong>, HOST, ''); } function forgetMe (f) { deleteCookie('mtcmtmail', <strong>'/'</strong>, HOST); deleteCookie('mtcmthome', <strong>'/'</strong>, HOST); deleteCookie('mtcmtauth', <strong>'/'</strong>, HOST); f.email.value = ''; f.author.value = ''; f.url.value = ''; }
The bolded bits in the above code were the only parts of my individual entry template I had to change — once those were fixed, I rebuilt my site, and things actually seem to be working now!
The reason that this problem doesn’t affect most people is that by default, MT stores all archives in a single directory. Since every archive page is pulled from the directory the cookie is set for, it works fine.
I’ve adjusted my archives to fall into directories based upon when they are posted — for instance, this entry will end up in the /archives/2003/02/10/ directory. So, when the cookies are only set for one directory at a time, it causes problems. By adding the slash to the above lines of JavaScript, the cookie is set for the entire site, and will be read for every page, no matter which directory it lives in.
Much better.
Dave Hyatt has got to be one of the bravest people on the ‘net I’ve seen. Consider…
Kudos to Dave for being crazy enough to do this, and to Apple for allowing him to do this. More companies need to realize that this is a real, effective way to encourage their users. We know that Safari is being worked on, we know that it’s being worked on by someone who genuinely cares about the project, and we know that they care about and listen to what their customers want to see in the product. I can’t think of a better way to build and keep customer loyalty than that.
Thanks to a clever little hack by Adam Kalsey, all comments and TrackBack pings that I receive are displayed as a single list on each entry’s page, sorted by the time they were received. Much nicer visually than having two seperate listings of responses to one of my posts.
There’s been a fair amount of discussion recently in the weblog world about the Creative Commons copyright licensing system. The CC meme spread like wildfire after it was introduced — spread, in part, by the recent Eldred vs. Ashcroft court decision that extended copyright terms. Today, Shelley wondered if she and Jonathan Delacour — who have both decided to forego the CC licence in favor of the more traditional “all rights reserved” copyright — “…can be the only two people who want to have some control over how our work is used. We can’t possibly be the only two people who believe this. Can we?”
Well, other people have already chimed in, but I can too — no, you two aren’t! I took a look at the CC licences when they first appeared, and considered adopting one of them for my weblog, but in the end, also decided not to. At the bottom of every page on this site, you’ll see the standard copyright line, and that’s how I intend to keep it.
Now, I sincerely doubt that anyone would ever go to the trouble of abusing the copyright I’ve claimed. Little of what I write here would really be publishable in any form other than that of a weblog — short comments, the occasional witty-in-my-head comment that very likely falls flat when read by anyone else, and the occasional long, rambling blather about my oh-so-(un)interesting life. However, whether or not it’s something that is of a quality to “deserve” copyright protection isn’t really the point — everything here that I’ve created, I’ve created, and I have every right to determine the ultimate fate of my creations (even if that fate is nothing more than getting lost in the great bit bucket of the Internet).
So — this space, such as it is, is mine, and copyrighted as such. Quote me if you like (preferably with a link back to me — I could use the traffic!), just respect the copyright and don’t steal from me. That’s all I ask. Simple enough, isn’t it?
Today brings the debut of a project I’ve been working on for the past week or so — The Hanscom Family Weblog! This is (will be) a collaborative weblog, by and for the various members of the Hanscom family. From my introductory post:
This is a project that I started thinking about a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been running my own weblog for a while now, but the idea of doing a “group weblog” had always bounced around in my brain. Suddenly, the idea hit me — why not make one for my family?
The Hanscom family members tend to be a wonderful combination of intelligent, opinionated, and locquacious, the combination of which seems like a natural wellspring for content. We’re also scattered across the United States, and currently the globe.
So, last week I sent an e-mail out to mom and dad, asking them to forward it along to the rest of the family, sounding out what they thought of the idea. So far, mom, dad, and Susan have all expressed interest, and I’m hoping that everyone else will join in the fray.
As things are just getting off the ground, at present I’m the only author, though that will change as soon as I get passwords assigned, e-mails sent out, instructions…instructed…anyway, all that fun stuff. In any case, we’re up and running!
[![First Annual Nude Blog Awards]]
[First Annual Nude Blog Awards]: https://michaelhans.com/eclecticism/graphics/2003/01/graphics/nudebloggies.gif {width=”88″ height=”31″}
Here I’ve been doing my best to keep this weblog of mine fairly solidly PG-rated, with the occasional slip into PG-13, and now I find that if only I’d shown some skin, I might have been eligible for the First Annual Nude Weblog Awards!
The really funny thing, is that I’ve had a few people over the years comment that given my thin/slender/wirey/anorexic (pick one) frame, I’d probably make a very good nude model. I’ve occasionally toyed with the idea, and wouldn’t mind giving it a shot at some point (thinking more along the lines of some decent black and white photography), but the opportunity’s never presented itself. Who knows, though — maybe next year, I’ll have a shot? ;)
Boy, wouldn’t my parents love seeing that pop up on the screen when they checked my page!
While there had been rumors of an Apple-branded web browser for a while, Safari‘s introduction at this most recent MacWorld took a lot of people by surprise, and watching the reaction has been quite interesting. Yesterday, Opera Software (makers of the Opera webbrowser) announced that they may stop development on the Mac version of their browser.
I’d say bummer — except that every time I tried Opera on my Mac, I was severely unimpressed.
The C|Net article, however, made me raise my eyebrows quite a few times as I read it over.
Specifically, [Opera CEO] Tetzchner said that he had asked Apple whether it would be willing to license Opera either to replace KHTML, or to supplement the current Safari version, which Apple said is a stripped-down affair with a minimalist interface and limited feature set.
“We have contacted Apple and asked them if they want a third-party browser, and we’ll see what the answer is,” Tetzchner said. “They could say we want to use Opera as the core engine. If they want KHTML as a simple little browser, and also something more advanced, we would be happy to provide it. Obviously, if we don’t get any positive signs from Apple, then we have to think about it.”
You’re kidding, right? After Apple has taken the time to create Safari, which has been getting good reviews all across the web, does Opera really think that they’ll suddenly decide to reverse direction, tear Safari down and rebuild it with an entirely different rendering engine? One that isn’t open source, and isn’t nearly as solid as the KHTML engine that Safari is currently using? I just don’t see that happening. And, apparently Apple doesn’t either:
“We think Safari is one of the best and most innovative browsers in the world, and it seems our customers do too,” the Mac maker said in a statement. “No one is making Mac users choose Safari over Opera — they’re doing it of their own free will — and Opera’s trashing of Safari sounds like sour grapes to us.”
Later in the article, C|Net gives us this:
Last quarter the online music service MusicMatch decided to drop its service for the Mac, following Apple’s release of the competing iTunes application.
At the time, MusicMatch reasoned that with Apple directly competing with it for an already small pool of users, maintaining development on a Mac version no longer made business sense.
Now, the PC version of the iPod uses a custom version of MusicMatch Jukebox on the PC for all the features that iTunes provides on the Mac! Sounds to me like even if MusicMatch did decide to drop their native Mac support, they didn’t exactly end up entirely on the losing end of the deal. While quite possibly a technically correct few sentences in the article, C|Net sure makes it sound like Apple did MusicMatch far worse than is actually the case. Anyway…
“It’s not a platform where we’ve earned a lot of money,” said Tetzchner. “It’s a business decision. We have been putting a lot of resources into the Apple version and think we have a much better product, but it’s still a question whether it’s worth it.”
Well, y’know, if you’d made a better browser, maybe you would have fared better. The times I tried Opera, it was slow, kludgy, had some very odd rendering issues, and had a huge, obnoxious ad banner embedded into the free version. When there are other free browsers available, even pre-Safari, that were smaller, faster, more accurate, and less intrusive, why would I choose Opera? Sour grapes, indeed.
(Via Safari developer Dave Hyatt)
Oh my lord.
Apple just revamped their desktop line and dropped prices — severely — on their monitors.
Their Power Mac G4 line is now available in single-1Ghz, dual-1.25Ghz, or dual-1.42Ghz models, and the mid-range dual-1.25Ghz model starts at \$1999.
Prices on their LCD monitors have dropped precipitously. The 17\” model dropped \$300, from \$999 to \$699, they introduced a new 20\” model at \$1299, and their top-of-the-line 23\” model dropped \$1500, from \$3499 to \$1999!
I really need to get my money saved up….