Tech

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

Archive tweaks, search engine online

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I went into serious geek mode for a few hours tonight (which, unfortnately, caused me to miss Enterprise because I got lost in code and didn’t realize what time it was until Candice called at 8:30pm) and have made a few improvements to the site.

There are two relatively minor changes to the Archives navigation box on the right hand side of the page. I shortened the monthly display list so that it takes up less space, and added links to the category pages that I talked about in my last entry. I also got the templates for my blog software adjusted so that the monthly and categorized archive pages match the look of the rest of the site — previously they were still using the default style that came with the software.

The most in-depth change is the addition of a very powerfull and full-featured search engine. There is a basic search box underneath the Archives links, and a link below that to a page that explains the more advanced search queries that are possible. Basically, it’s a full-featured, Google-style search function for my site. Pretty nifty!

I’ve also adjusted the colophon to reflect the addition of the new search script.

Archives back online

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It took a while, but I’ve finally managed to get all of my old archives back online after I borked things up last month. So, for the truly bored (or possibly just masochistic), you can now use the archive links towards the top right of the page to go through a month-by-month listing of everything I’ve babbled on this site, from November of 2000 to now.

Just to make things even more scary, though — because that in itself wasn’t enough for me — all the posts are even categorized. I’ll eventually be getting little icon links up in that archives box for this, but if you (for some godforsaken reason) actually want to go through what I’ve written in a slightly more organized fashion, you can. The categories are (thank you, Vanna): Lifebits (day to day ramblings, personal bits, and what’s going on in the wonderful world of Wüdi), DJbits (anything pertaining to my self-indulgent attempts at entertaining large masses of people [and the occasional massively large person]), Sitebits (my attempts to explain where I’ve botched things up most recently as I play with my webserver), Moviebits (flicks I’ve seen or bought), Trekbits (yup…I’m a trekkie [-er?] too…scared yet?), Quotebits (quotes I’ve collected generally end up here before making it to my quotebook), Humorbits (the stuff I think is funny…your mileage may vary), and Linkbits (places around the ‘net I think are worth a visit).

Bad site slowdowns

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Okay — if you’re reading this, you may (or may have not) noticed that for some reason, my website is responding incredibly slowly at the moment. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to figure out just why this is happening yet. Things were working fine earlier tonight, but when I came back to my computers after watching Enterprise, something’s obviously going on — some pages are taking as long as a minute to load, when it should be nearly instantaneous.

I’m banging my head against things right now to try and figure out what’s going on, but so far have yet to come up with any solid ideas or leads. Hopefully it’s just a temporary thing, but I really have no way of knowing whether it will be or not. I’m just kinda lost and flying blind at the moment…(sigh)…grrrr. Bleah. Pfutz.

Resurrections

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I’m slowly but surely getting all the old posts that disappeared when I borked things up put back in. It’s kind of slow going, since I’ve got to do it mostly by hand (at least I can cut and paste the HTML — if all I could do was re-type it, there’s no way it would get done), but so far I’ve got the Featured Posts working again, and all posts from today back through December ’01 back in. It’s a start, at least.

Quotebook updates

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Well, when I nuked a fair amount of my site, one of the things I managed to kill was the random quote generator that displays a randomly selected quote underneath the quotebook link in the contents bar and on the quotebook introduction page. So, I’m working on going through my quotebook and re-creating the list of quotes for the generator to pull from, and as I do so, I’m adding hyperlinks where appropriate to the attributions. In so doing, I believe Royce may end up with more links to his site from mine alone than from the rest of the ‘net in totality. Never let it be said I never do a friend a favor — no matter how completely goofball it may be.

AARRGGHH!!

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I lost my blog!

I had some problems with my webserver earlier this weekend, which necessitated having to reinstall the system. When I copied the essential files for my website off the box, I forgot one crucial little directory — and managed to completely bork up my blog software. Dammit.

I think I’ve still got all the essential information at the moment, it’ll just be a bit of a chore to see if I can get it all put back in. I don’t have any way of fooling the software into believing that all these files are actually part of the current install, so I may need to do a lot of hand work to get the old posts back in. But — if I can’t do it — well, it looks like I’m just starting over.

Lord of the OS

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Recently one of my friends, a computer wizard, paid me a visit. As we were talking I mentioned that I had recently installed Windows XP on my PC. I told him how happy I was with this operating system and showed him the Windows XP CD. To my surprise he threw it into my microwave oven and turned it on. Instantly I got very upset, because the CD had become precious to me, but he said, “Do not worry, it is unharmed.”

After a few minutes he took the CD out, gave it to me and said, “Take a close look at it.” To my surprise the CD was quite cold to hold and it seemed to be heavier than before. At first I could not see anything, but on the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, an inscription finer than anything I had ever seen before. The inscription shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth:

12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE820945
092OF923A40EElOE5IOCC98D444AA08E324

“I cannot understand the fiery letters,” I said in a timid voice.

“No, but I can,” he said. “The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft, which I shall not utter here. But in common English this is what it says: ‘One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them, One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.’

“It is only two lines from a verse long known in System lore:”

Three OS’s from corporate kings in their towers of glass,
Seven from valley lords where orchards used to grow,
Nine from dotcoms doomed to die,
One from the Dark Lord Gates on his dark throne
In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie.
One OS to rule them all, one OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie.

— Source unknown

Beyond the rumor sites

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MacWorld Expo SF is coming up next week, which normally has the various Mac rumor sites all a-tizzy trying to predict what may or may not appear. This time, around, however, Apple — rather than staying their characteristically silent self — is doing the online equivalent of tossing a goldfish into a pirahna tank, through the posting of oh-so-subtle headlines like ‘Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond.’ to their website. Now, now, shouldn’t tease the animals….

— AtAT’s take on Apple‘s apparent plans to make their most rabidly loyal followers’ heads implode.

[From Usenet: 1.2.02 0143]

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[Note: This was originally a post to the alt.sys.mac.newuser-help Usenet newsgroup. I’m including it here for completeness. Originally archived here.]

Albert –

First off, I hope your experiences with OS X continue to improve, as you indicated they had started to in a followup post. Figured I could go ahead and jump in the fray, though… ;)

In article <asteg-5FD600.02164401012...@news.mindspring.com>, Albert Steg <as...@mindspring.com> wrote:

The installation process disbabled my Enternet software, crippling my internet access, and even when I got back to system 9 I found my internet aliases (eudora and netscape) hidden from my desktop and replaced with Explorer. Felt like a Microsoft ploy.

That’s something of a surprise. Each time I’ve done an OS X install (starting with the Public Beta), it’s gone smooth as silk. Really unsure as to what may have gone on to actually disable anything.

…and the interface is totally new, isn’t it?” Why is there no warning or explanation in the manual that this system represents a radical departure from the Apple of the past 15 years?

Well, it’s definitely a new system, but the manual I got – while really underwhelming – did at least have a cursory “this is what you’re gonna get” feel to it. Much as ‘puter people sterotypically go with a “install first, read later if something explodes” attitude, sometimes it can be helpful to at least flip through the documentation at least once first… ;)

I am, along with others, somewhat surprised that you were caught so completely off guard – wherever you’ve been, you must have been really out of touch. If you start poking around the web, though, there’s a lot of good information on all the various changes, both why they were done and what the various repercussions are. The OS X manual that Carl linked to (http://homepage.mac.com/rgriff/files/osxguide2.pdf) is a good start, I’d also recommend spending some time digging through Mac OS X Hints (http://www.macosxhints.com/), lots of good info on there.

Am I alone in being dismayeed and bewildered here? These huge Playskool-style icons,

These can be scaled up and down to your preferences…they are a wee bit on the big side by default.

the inability to open two windows at one time

You can have more than two open at once. Check your System Preferences and View Options (under the Finder’s View menu) for the various options there.

…the oily, gimmicky sluuuuurping of windows

Some people like the ‘genie’ effect, some don’t – I’ve switched it to the ‘scale’ effect, as it’s a bit less processor-intensive (and therefore a bit quicker on my machine).

down to the Windows-like “dock”

It takes some getting used to, but I’ve found the dock to be a very nice addition (though, I’ve gotta admit, I’ve liked certain aspects of the Windows taskbar too). I keep my dock devoid of any aliases, so that I don’t have to try to distinguish between icons of running aps and icons of apps that I can run if I want, and only use it for whatever’s running at the moment. For me it works much better as a application switcher than as a launcher, but different things work for different people…experiment with it a bit, after the initial shock, you may find it more to your liking.

instead of the crisp windowshade feature of previous systems….

As has been noted by a couple people, there is a shareware program that will bring windowshading back to OS X (though I don’t use it myself).

these are improvements?

Overall, yeah…just improvements with a bit more learning curve than has been necessary for past OS updates. But then, past OS updates didn’t completely rewrite the OS from the ground up, either…. :)

How about an explanation of the itools program, rather than just thrusting it at you in the config process?

Apple would do well to explain this a bit more. However, breifly, iTools isn’t so much a program as it is a set of services that Apple provides that you can use or ignore as you like. It includes free e-mail with a mac.com suffix, an online storage space (your iDisk), and some other features that can be explored in more depth on Apple’s iTools site (http://www.apple.com/itools/). You don’t have to use any of them, though, if you don’t want or need to.

Can I use Eudora instead of Itools. . .

Yup – I think there’s even an OS X version of Eudora out by now. Check VersionTracker (http://www.versiontracker/macosx/) to be sure.

or do I have to use Itools to access eudora now?

Nope, though you probably can use Eudora to access your iTools mac.com e-mail account if you’ve set one up (though I’m not 100% sure on that).

. . . granted I have to give it a chance, but I am not looking forward to this.

Well, go ahead and poke around, play for a while, and give it that chance. There’s some culture shock – especially since you apparently didn’t know what you were in for – but it’s not that bad once you get used to it.